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AMERICAN EDUCATION SERIES 
GEORGE DRAYTON STRAYER. GENERAL EDITOR 



AMERICAN EDUCATION SERIES 
GEORGE DRAYTON STRAYER. GENERAL EDITOR 



THE TREND IN 
AMERICAN EDUCATION 



BY 
JAMES EARL RUSSELL 

DEAN OF TEACHERS COLLEGE, 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 




AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO 

BOSTON ATLANTA 



a^""^ 

"n* 



COPVRIGHT, 1922, BY 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 

RUSSELL — TREND IN EDUCATION 

MADE IN U. S. A. 
E. P. I. 



JUL 20 1922 

©C(,Af>7 7.5 8 2 
"VHP ) 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

One of the most significant phenomena in the develop* 
ment of our American democracy during the past thirty 
years has been the ever enlarging scope of our system of 
education. There has been a conscious attempt on the 
part of our people to realize the democratic ideal of equality 
of opportunity. The remarkable progress that has been 
made is due in no small measure to the leadership of a 
group of men and women who have thought and planned 
in advance of current practice. 

During the twenty-five years which are just past Dean 
Russell has been responsible for the development of an 
educational institution which has trained leaders for our 
American schools from the kindergarten to the university. 
He has been in the position of one who has thought and 
planned in terms of our rapidly developing school system. 
His leadership would not have been recognized had he 
sought merely to meet the current demand. The very 
great respect which members of the profession have come 
to have for his judgment, and their confidence in his fore- 
sight are clearly evidenced by the growth and influence 
of the institution over which he presides. 

In this volume Dean Russell records his thought con- 
cerning many of the problems which have perplexed us 
during the past twenty years. The papers cover a wide 
range of topics, and are presented here with only slight 

5 



6 EDITOR S INTRODUCTION 

revision and for the most part in chronological order. The 
reader will find, however, a unity among them determined 
by the author's thought with respect to the development 
of our American schools. One who is a member of the 
teaching profession will come from his perusal of the 
volume with a clearer understanding of the purpose of 
our public schools and with a renewed acceptance of the 
call to professional service. 

George D. Strayer 



CONTENTS 



APTER PAGE 

I. The Trend in American Education ... 9 

II. The Training of Teachers for Secondary 

Schools ....... 26 

III. The Educational Value of Examinations for 

Admission to College ..... 47 

IV. The Opportunities and Responsibilities of 

Professional Service ..... 61 

V. The Call to Professional Service ... 77 

VI. The School and Industrial Life ... 90 

VII. Professional Factors in the Training of the 

High-School Teacher . . . • 115 

VIII. Specialism in Education ..... 140 

IX. Coeducation in High Schools . . . . iS7 

X. The Vital Things in Education . . . 168 

XL Scouting Education ..... 184 

XII. Education for Democracy .... 201 

XIII. The Organization of Teachers . . .215 

XIV. The University and Professional Training . 223 



CHAPTER I 

THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION* 

THE keynote of American life is democracy — social 
democracy. I say social democracy, because 
England is politically more democratic than 
the United States. On the other hand, England inherits 
conceptions of caste of which we know nothing. The Eng- 
lish churchman prays to be content with that station in 
life in which Providence has placed him. On the other side 
of the water, schools for the poor are free; the rich must pay 
for their education. The great preparatory schools of Eng- 
land, as well as the venerable universities, are for gentle- 
men's sons, and only gentlemen are wanted in the church, 
at the bar, or in the army and navy. 

Beginning of education in New England. — The found- 
ers of this republic thought it a self-evident truth that 
all men are created equal. The settlers of New England 
left the old world in search of religious freedom — to found 
a new home in which each might worship God in his own 
way. They were so intensely in earnest that they were 
willing to suffer for the faith, and so conscientious that 
they were willing also to make others suffer for differing 
with them. 

They were stem men, those ancient fathers of New 
England, and they had little faith in the natural course 

'A revised reprint from the Educational Review, New York, June, 1906, used by 
coiirtes\' of the publishers. 



lO THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

of human development. Five years after the estabhsh- 
ment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony they founded the 
Boston Latin School — " younger " and more vigorous to- 
day than at any other time in its history. A letter written 
at the time says: "After God had carried us safely to New 
England, and we had builded our houses, provided neces- 
saries for our livelihood, rear'd convenient places for 
God's worship, and settled the Civill Govt. : one of the next 
things we longed for, and looked after, was to advance 
learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave 
an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present 
ministers shall lie in the dust." 

Next, in 1640, they founded Harvard College — also 
" younger " and more vigorous than at any other time 
in its career. Then, two years later (1642), they urged 
/ selectmen to see that parents provided for the education 
^C^ of all children to the extent of teaching them (i) to read, 
(2) to understand the principles of rehgion, (3) the capital 
laws of the colony, and (4) to engage in some suitable 
employment. 

In 1647 the General Court of Massachusetts passed its 
epoch-making act providing for public instruction: "It 
being one chief object of that old deluder, Satan, to keep 
men from the knowledge Cfi the Scriptures, as in former 
times by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these 
latter times by persuading from the use of tongues, . . . 
that learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers 
in the Church and Commonwealth, the Lord assisting our 
endeavors, etc., etc. ... It is therefore ordered " 
. . . that there be (i) one teacher for every fifty 
householders, to teach reading and writing, and (2) one 



THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION II 

grammar school when a town reaches one hundred fam- 
ilies " to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for 
the university." 

From such a beginning has come our great school system, 
potentially the mightiest engine for good in our national 
life, actually the most expensive single department in our 
civil government. It should be noted, however, that in 
those early days " reading and writing " were the means 
of training the common man; the substance of his educa- 
tion consisted of religion, civil government, and suitable 
employment — all of them factors of everyday life in the 
home, the church, and the community. Until 1692 only 
church members were freemen and allowed to vote. 
Down to the nineteenth century there were no public 
elementary schools, as we know them. The schools that 
did exist were designed to fit boys for college, and the col- 
leges were but stepping-stones to leadership in state and 
church. 

Development of leadership. — So it has been from the 
beginning of human society. Schools for leaders come 
first, because no society can long endure that does not 
have capable leaders — leaders in the field and leaders in 
the forum. The masses of the people may be trained — 
and trained successfully, too, — to maintain civil order 
and social stability by the institution of slavery, or bond- 
age, or serfdom, or by social customs which impose class 
distinctions upon all. With leaders trained to lead and a 
people trained to obey, you have the prime factors in 
successful national fife — successful, at any rate, from the 
autocratic or paternal standpoint. There is no call for 
universal education until in the course of human events 



12 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

men — individual human beings — have rights which can- 
not be denied them. Schools for the common people arise 
when it is recognized, for example, that each person has 
a soul to save, or when the form of government gives to 
each a vote. 

Era of industrialism. — The trend in American educa- 
tion for nearly two hundred years was advantageous to 
those who were to be our leaders. There was first the 
Latin school, preparatory to college, and then the collegiate 
course preparatory to the ministry and to law — i. e., 
leadership in Church and State. Gradually American life 
began to demand trained physicians and engineers. Per- 
haps, in one sense, there had always been such a need, but 
consciousness of the need was not roused until the dis- 
covery of the manufacture and transmission of power 
through steam some hundred years ago. A new era was 
ushered in with the nineteenth century. 

1. A government guaranteeing equal rights had been 
firmly established, and the old causes for contention were 
thus removed. 

2. Freedom of worship was assured to all. Denomi- 
national control of education gave way to state control. 

3. Increasing immigration began to make for a cosmo- 
politan population. Life was growing more complex; 
less dependence could be placed on domestic training. 

4. Advances in science led to a new industrial order. 
Previous to the year 1800, men could use only such power 
as they had in their own bodies, in domesticated animals, 
or in moving air or running water. How impotent such 
means to the settling of the great West and the upbuilding 
of a great nation! 



THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 1 3 

Differentiation in offerings. — These are some of the 
influences which converted us, within the limits of a single 
century, from a provincial and agricultural people into an 
industrial and commercial nation. The result was that 
the old education, however successful it may have been 
in producing great preachers and men of affairs, speedily 
became inadequate to meet the demands of an industrial 
and commercial age. A process of differentiation was 
soon noticeable within the college, and new professional 
schools sprang into being. Take, for example, the year- 
1850 as a turning point. Before 1850 we had, in all, some 
10 law schools, 37 medical schools, 2 schools of dentistry, 
3 engineering schools, 2 schools of agriculture and mechan- 
ical arts. We have since increased the number to 86 law 
schools (50 of these having been established between 1876 
and 1900), 156 medical schools (86 established between 
1876 and 1900), 56 schools of dentistry (47 established 
between 1876 and 1900), while engineering schools and 
schools of agriculture and mechanic arts are everywhere.^ 

And the end is not yet. We are rapidly building schools 
for nurses, for artists, for railway superintendents, for 
architects, for housekeepers and homemakers, for jour- 
nalists, and even for philanthropists. Then, too, look at 
the differentiation within the old groups. Medical schools 
are to-day professional or graduate, medical or surgical, 
allopathic or homeopathic, or eclectic. Engineering has 
subdivided into civil, electrical, mechanical, chemical, 
sanitary, and so on through the list as given by many of 
our great technical schools. 

' Present statistics show 142 law schools, 94 medical schools, and 
50 schools of dentistry. 



14 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Progress of education. — There is, as I have said, no 
end to this development, and there can be no end to it, so 
long as human needs increase or differentiate or become 
more complex. The greater the need of trained leaders 
the more positive the tendency to supply them. When we 
cease to grow and expand territorially; when our wants 
become fewer or our ambitions and susceptibilities become 
less keen; when we stop pushing onward — then you may 
confidently predict a period of ease and comfort and satis- 
faction with existing educational opportunities. But so 
long as the United States holds its place among the great 
world powers, so long as our states and cities have ideals 
to which they have not attained, so long as individuals 
have ambitions which are not satisfied, so long will edu- 
cational affairs remain unsettled and unsatisfying. The 
millennium which many school boards and some edu- 
cators long for — that age in which the public will not 
ask for better schools and more of them, and when school 
superintendents and college presidents will cease to vex 
their teachers with requests to do some new thing — that 
millennium, I say, will mark the dechne and fall of the 
great American RepubHc. It will be the end of a demo- 
cratic fiasco in civil government, the bursting of the bubble 
which has tantalized European autocrats for a century 
with some semblance of reality, the end of the most stu- 
pendous failure the world has ever seen. 

No, there can be no rest, no halt, even, in the progress of 
education. It is not something which can be stopped and 
started at will; it is not a tangible reality which can be 
fixed on a plate for microscopic examination at any time. 
It is a vital process, indissolubly bound up with our social 



THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 1 5 

and civil life. Once you catch it, or check its course, you 
will find in your hands merely lifeless clay, a cadaver, in 
which the vital spark is extinguished. 

Changes in course of study. — The trend in American 
education has been not only in the differentiation of pro- 
fessional schools, but also in the courses of study and sub- 
jects taught. I have no time to point out the changes 
that have taken place even within a generation in our 
American colleges and universities. Up to 1800 the en- 
trance requirements to our best colleges were Latin, 
Greek, and sometimes a little arithmetic " as far as the 
rule of three "; and even in Latin and Greek scarcely as 
much as we now read in three years in a good high school » 
But between 1800 and 1870 eight new subjects were added 
to the entrance list, " whereas during the century and a 
half prior to 1800 the only addition of any consequence 
was elementary arithmetic." 

I have no need to remind you that the modern college 
offers far more than any one boy can take or should take. 
Hence the struggle over classical studies versus scientific 
studies, the establishment of " modern " courses, the 
device of multiplying bachelor's degrees, the elective sys- 
tem, and all that train of controversies which have vexed 
the souls and spoiled the tempers of many, many college 
professors. 

An indictment of present practices. — A survey of the 
field discloses much to be thankful for. We have made 
a fair beginning in our higher education — a beginning, 
I say, because there is not in this country to-day a college, 
or university, or professional school adequately equipped 
for the work it is attempting to do; there is not one of the 



l6 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

great plants, however much it may cost the public for 
maintenance, that is being conducted efl&ciently or effect- 
ively, simply because the public does not yet appreciate 
the worth of the work it is doing or realize that the greatest 
economy in operation is impossible when defective machines 
and ill-paid workmen are put to a task that demands the 
best in everything — the best of equipment, the best of 
men, and the best of service. Some day, I hope, the 
American public will reahze that our school system, from 
kindergarten to university professional school, is an en- 
gine so expensive that we cannot afford to keep it idle a 
part of the time, or run it except with its maximum load; 
an engine so expensive, too, that we cannot afford to 
intrust it to the hands of inexperienced or half-trained 
engineers. No business man would for a moment tolerate 
the waste and inefficiency in his affairs that we all know 
exists in education to-day. 

I wish to push the indictment one step farther. Our 
educational system is not only wasteful and inefficient 
because it is operated at " low pressure," but it is unfair 
in that it does not do what the founders of this republic 
meant that it should do. // does not give equality of 
opportunity to all. This may seem surprising, particu- 
larly as we have been boasting for a century of our Ameri- 
can liberty, fraternity, and equality. It is the boast, too, 
of most Americans that our great pubhc-school system — 
the greatest thing on earth — provides alike for every boy 
and girl taking advantage of it. This is half true — and 
dangerous, as all haff-truths are. The fact is, the Ameri- 
can system of education grants equahty of opportunity 
only to those who can go on to the college and the uni- 



THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 1 7 

versity. It takes little account of the boy — and less still 
of the girl — who cannot or does not wish for a higher 
education. Those who " drop out " at the age of twelve 
or fourteen, compelled to earn a livelihood, have missed 
their opportunity. But why? Do we in America have 
need only of professional men and " men of affairs? " 
Are those who pay the taxes and do the rougher work of 
life to be denied opportunity for self-improvement? Are 
only those who can afford to stay in school to reap the 
advantages of education? In a word, what are we doing 
to help the average man better to do his life work and 
better to realize the wealth of his inheritance as an Ameri- 
can citizen? These questions raise the problem of voca- 
tional training for those who must begin early to earn 
their living. It is, in my judgment, the greatest problem 
of the future, and one which we may not longer disregard 
if we are to maintain our standing as a nation. 

A start in life. — Although we have consciously done 
next to nothing to give the average man a fair start in his 
life work, unconsciously we have been putting forth efforts 
to meet his needs. A century ago the elementary school 
was the first step in the way to college. So it is to-day, 
but with this important difference: the curriculum of the 
old-time school was religion and the three R's. The time 
came when religion had to be put aside. That left the 
three R's — an impossible curriculum, notwithstanding 
the praises of some good people who do not think for 
themselves, but have an unquenchable desire to think 
for other people. You cannot read without reading some- 
thing; and you cannot reckon without problems in some- 
thing. The colonial schoolmaster, like the modern paro- 

TREND IN ED. — 2 



1 8 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

chial schoolmaster, made religion the substance of his in- 
struction. The modern advocates of the simple curric- 
ulum of the three R's must choose between the " three 
R's " directed to something and nothing at all. 

The fact is, the moment religion was put aside some- 
thing else had to come in. We put in English literature, 
history, civics, science, and music — in a word, the course 
was enriched. Yet the common sense of our American 
public insisted on further enrichment for the sake of those 
who needed a more practical training. Hence the intro- 
duction of drawing, manual training, cooking, and sew- 
ing — fads and frills, if you please, but nevertheless an 
honest (if unintentional) effort to accord to the great mass 
of our children vocational advantages similar to those en- 
Joyed by the few who could go on to higher grades of 
vocational training. It is precisely the same sort of de- 
velopment (from the simple to the more complex; from 
the general to the specific; from the purely disciphnary 
to the practical and vocational) that we have observed in 
the field of higher education. 

But the end is not yet. The movement is only begun. 
The trend is unmistakably toward still further differentia- 
tion and still more complete adaptation to the needs of 
every-day life. The distinctive peculiarity of American 
education from the beginning almost to the present day 
is its selective character. Like the Scottish schoolmaster, 
we have rejoiced more over the one " lad of pairts " who 
somehow gets ahead, despite our instruction, perhaps, 
than over the ninety and nine who need our help. We 
boast of an educational ladder that reaches from the gutter 
to the university, and we see nothing amiss in making our 



THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 1 9 

elementary schools preparatory to the high school, and 
the high school preparatory to the college and university. 
In other words, that which few need all must take. 

Support of education in Europe. — My conviction is that, 
instead of being satisfied with our school system in this 
country, we should be thoroughly ashamed of it — ashamed 
not of our good schools and the good work that is being 
done, but ashamed that we as a people are being con- 
tented with so restricted a system of public education and 
so narrow a curriculum. We accept the pohtician's dic- 
tum that we are too poor to spend more than we do on 
education, when the fact is we are too poor to spend so 
little. More, much more than we now spend on education 
would be money in our pockets if only we knew how to 
spend it aright. 

France, although heavily burdened for years, main- 
tained in addition to her great system of elementary, sec- 
ondary, and higher schools (including universities, profes- 
sional schools, and schools of science) the following insti- 
tutions for teaching the industrial arts: 

I National Institute of Arts and Trades. 

I Central School of Arts and Manufactures. 

8 High Schools of Commerce. 

I Advanced School of Commerce. 

I Commercial Institute. 

4 National Schools of Arts and Trades. 

1 National School for Training Superintendents and Foremen. 

2 National Schools of Watchmaking. 
4 National Professional Schools. 

26 Commercial and Industrial Schools for Boys. 
6 Commercial and Industrial Schools for Girls. 

In addition to the foregoing the municipal bodies of 



20 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

towns of any importance have opened professional schools 
for the elementary teaching of trades, industries, or arts 
(design, weaving, lacemaking, dressmaking, dyeing, elec- 
tricity, bookkeeping, and stenography). There were also 
numerous private schools and societies for the improve- 
ment of the artisan, which were well attended. 

What France has done has also been done — and done 
better in some respects — by Belgium, Holland, Denmark, 
Sweden, Switzerland, and England. 

American policies in education. — There are two suffi- 
cient reasons for our not following Europe's lead: (i) we 
don't want to, and (2) we don't need to. We don't need 
to because life in this country is still easy. It isn't half 
settled yet. Some day we shall have five hundred mil- 
lions here. I suppose we have land enough, and land good 
enough if tilled properly, to support a population ten times 
as great as that we now have. But even fifty years from 
now, at our present rate of increase, we shall begin to ap- 
preciate what competition means. What will it mean when 
necessity compels us to use at its best every square foot of 
land we ovm? Then the man who wiU not work surely may 
not eat. And if he would preserve American traditions of 
decency and competence, he must work harder and more 
effectively than the man of to-day has to work. 

It must be obvious to any fair-minded student of our 
educational system that we are doing next to nothing 
either to ward off threatened dangers or to prepare for 
those which are bound to come in future. Instead of 
doing the practical thing we, a so-called " practical " 
people, are content to produce " cuteness." The business 
world expects every man to do his duty — but it is very 



THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 21 

obvious that his first duty is to hustle and to get results. 
I once heard a colored preacher in the South illustrate 
the spirit of the age in this wise: " Once we measured time 
by grandfather's clock, which said, • ' Ever — forever, 
never — forever ' ; nowadays we use a Waterbury , which 
says, ' Git thar — ■ git thar.' " Our aim is to " git thar " 
— in our college sports, in professional life, in business ; 
everywhere we count on winning, honestly, if possible; 
dishonestly, if necessary, and if the chances of getting 
found out are not too great. 

Contrary to the findings of some critics, I believe that 
our schools are partly responsible for confirming us in our 
besetting sins — not by what they teach, but in the pre- 
vaihng methods of teaching. The fact is, we do look for 
results and are not over-particular how these results are ob- 
tained or whether they are just right or not. We are too 
easily satisfied with a plausible rendering of a foreign text; 
we are prone to measure proficiency by the amount of work 
done or the time spent in doing it, rather than by excel- 
lence of accomplishment or accuracy of method. We en- 
courage guessing, and the prize too often goes to him who 
shows greatest skill in concealing his ignorance. In a word, 
we are too easily satisfied with appearances and attach 
too little weight to the moral effects of doing honest work. 

There is another reason, as I have said, why we do not 
choose to follow European methods of education: We don't 
want to. We don't want to because we are not bound by 
social traditions. Our society is a social democracy. 
Our schools are designed to grant equal opportunity to 
all. In most other countries, England included, the 
school system is deliberately intended to keep some down 



22 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

while helping others up. So long as our mode of gov- 
ernment endures we cannot shut the door of opportunity 
in the face of any citizen. It is the greatest experiment 
the world has ever seen, and while there are many who 
would gladly see it fail, it is our bounden duty to make it 
succeed. It would be presumptuous to say, after only 
one century of trial, that success is already assured. This 
is only the beginning. We are Just coming to realize some 
of our blessings, as we see more clearly for the first time 
some of our dangers. 

Education for the coming generation. — How can a 
nation endure that deliberately seeks to rouse ambitions 
and aspirations in the oncoming generations which in the 
nature of events cannot possibly be fulfilled? If the chief 
object of government be to promote civil order and social 
stability, how can we justify our practice in schooHng the 
masses in precisely the same manner as we do those who 
are to be our leaders? Is human nature so constituted 
that those who fail will readily acquiesce in the success of 
their rivals, especially if tbat success be the result of 
" cuteness," rather than honest effort? Is it any wonder 
that we are beset with labor troubles? We are, indeed, 
optimists if we see no cause for alarm in our present social 
conditions; and we are worse than fools if we content our- 
selves with a superficial treatment of the ills that afiflict 
us. Legislation may do much to help us out of trouble, 
but it is only education of the right sort that can perma- 
nently keep us from ruin. There never has been a time 
when we were more in need of sound education, and in the 
struggle for existence that is yet to come we shall need a 
better education than we conceive of to-day. 



THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 2.3 

An educational creed. — There is one educational prin- 
ciple that is pecuharly American. It is that every man, 
because he is a man and an American citizen, should be 
liberally educated so far as circumstances will permit. 
A man, according to our Magna Charta, is entitled to life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The first business 
of the schools is to make life worth living, liberty worth 
striving for, and the pursuit of happiness something for 
which no man need be ashamed. We need, in my opinion, 
one more article in our educational creed. It is this: In 
making a man, make him good for something. It is a 
practice easily recognizable in the history of our universi- 
ties and professional schools. 

Our future procedure. — The next step is to see that 
the common man is equally well provided for. A begin- 
ning has been made in the enrichment of the course of 
study in our elementary and high schools, thus giving a 
choice of studies and better preparation for life if the 
pupil knows how to choose wisely; in the introduction of 
the natural sciences, manual training, and the domestic 
arts, thus giving some acquaintance with the industrial 
processes underlying our civilization if the subjects be 
well taught; and finally, in the differentiation of the school 
courses and school work whenever the future vocations 
of the pupils are definitely known, as in the negro schools 
of the South, the county agricultural schools of Wiscon- 
sin, and the trade schools of some of our eastern cities. 

But all this is only a beginning. At best but little can 
be done before the age of fourteen, but that little can be 
of the right kind. In teaching arithmetic we can as well 
present problems of every-day significance as those which 



24 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

are never met with ouc of school; in reading we can read 
that which is worth remembering; in history we can dwell 
upon some events which are not political; in science we 
can prepare for farming as well as for college; in manual 
training and the domestic arts we can do in the small 
what the race has done in the large in its efforts to pro- 
vide food, clothing, and shelter, and to perfect means of 
communication and transportation. If nothing else is 
gained from the elementary school than a wholesome re- 
spect for man's industry, a good basis is afforded for 
participation in man's occupations. 

The insurance of democracy. — The serious preparation 
for practical life begins for the great majority of persons 
at the age of thirteen or fourteen, on leaving the elemen- 
tary school. The most dangerous period in the life of a 
boy or girl lies just ahead — say up to the age of nineteen 
or twenty. This is the time when the average boy must 
learn to be self-supporting, and when the girl must fit her- 
self for domestic duties. It is the time, too, when tech- 
nical training counts for most. I contend that every 
American boy and girl is entitled to practical help in thip 
time of greatest need — and at public expense, too, if the 
state maintains high schools, universities, and profes- 
sional schools for those who aspire to leadership in pro- 
fessional life. My reasons for this contention are these: 

1. Anything that will contribute to the greater efficiency 
of the workman is a contribution not only to his own well- 
being but to the wealth of the nation. 

2. Anything that will lead the workman to take more 
pride in his work tends to make him a better citizen and 
a more conservative member of society. 



THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 25 

If it be possible to make each man, no matter what his 
social standing may be, an honest leader in his own field, 
a workman who is not ashamed of his handiwork, then we 
need fear no criticism of our colleagues across the sea, nor 
need we as an industrial people fear the competition in 
the world's markets. More than that, we need never lose 
faith in the righteousness of American ideals or dread the 
consequences of our social democracy. If there be those 
who say the task is impossible, I answer in the words of 
General Armstrong, when some one doubted the possi- 
bility of negro education, " What are Christians for but 
to do the impossible? " 



CHAPTER II 

THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS ^ 

THE striking characteristic of American education 
is the fact that each school — better said, per- 
haps, each school board — is the measure of all 
things educational. And nowhere is this sophistic doc- 
trine more apparent than in the secondary realm. What 
constitutes a secondary school, even the scope and pur- 
pose of secondary education itself, are debatable ques- 
tions. This condition of affairs is largely due to the 
radically different tendencies in the development of our 
educational system. Part of it has come down from 
above in response to the intellectual and spiritual needs 
of colonial life; part of it has grown up from below to meet 
the demands of an ambitious people determined to win 
their way in the world. These two forces — one of them 
essentially aristocratic, the other essentially democratic — 
meet in the secondary school. The conflict that results 
naturally makes extra hazardous any attempt to apply 
general principles derived exclusively from experience 
either in elementary or in higher education. Dictatorial 
college faculties too frequently Join hands with ignorant 
demagogues in promoting evil in place of good. The 
secondary school is not merely the first four grades of the 
college course, nor yet is it the last four classes of the 
elementary school; it is at once both of these and neither. 

'A revised reprint from National Education Association Proceedings, IQOI, used by 
courtesy of the publishers. 

26 



TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 27 

The training of the adolescent mind presents problems 
unknown in the primary school; with the psychological 
new birth another mode of education becomes imperative. 
And on the other hand it is obvious that the requirements 
for admission to college do not exhaust the demands of 
Hfe. The college and university can never enjoy a mo- 
nopoly of higher education. The peculiar function of the 
secondary school is the selection and training of leaders 
for intelligent service in academic, professional, and in- 
dustrial life. In no educational work can there be greater 
need of teachers fully alive to the responsibilities resting 
upon them; nowhere can there be greater need of teachers 
fitted by nature and training to discharge their duties 
aright. 

The college graduate as a secondary-school teacher. — 
It is only in these latter days that any question has arisen 
concerning the necessary qualifications of teachers for 
secondary schools. So long as the only secondary school 
of consequence was the academy or college preparatory 
school, so long the only teacher worth considering was 
the college graduate. He who would successfully fit boys 
for college must himself know by experience what the col- 
leges demand. Moreover, in those days, what the col- 
leges demanded was chiefly Latin and Greek, and it would 
have been idle for any man to have set himself up as a 
teacher of the classical languages who had not enjoyed 
the classical training. But with the growth of the cur- 
riculum, and especially since the rise of the high school 
has introduced variety not only in the subjects of instruc- 
tion but in the purpose of secondary education as well, 
the former source of supply of teachers has proved inade- 



28 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

quale. It may as well be acknowledged, first as last, that 
the college graduate of the last generation could claim no 
considerable superiority over his non-collegiate competi- 
tor in respect either to special knowledge or to skill in 
teaching many subjects of the secondary course. In fact, 
only in the classical languages has he stood imrivaled. 
In the modern languages, English, history, mathematics, 
and the natural sciences he has often found his equal. 
Frequently the knowledge of the specialist, or the pro- 
fessional skill of the normal-school graduate, has been 
preferred to the so-called "general culture" of the collegian 
who has sauntered through the mazes of an " elective 
course " with no suspicion of sound scholarship attaching 
to him. Unquestionably the lack of special knowledge and 
of educational interests in the average college graduate 
has had great weight in promoting the popular tendency 
to discredit a liberal education as an essential pre-requisite 
to work in the secondary schools. We may deprecate 
the situation as we will, it is a fact, nevertheless, that 
the college-trained teacher has but slight advantage in 
gaining admission to the secondary school. 

Teaching and its tangible reward. — One other fact 
worth consideration: It is becoming year by year more 
difficult for college graduates to find employment in the 
schools at a living wage. Granted that the number of 
positions annually falling vacant is relatively stationary, 
and that the number of applicants is relatively increasing, 
but one result can be expected. The law of supply and 
demand forces salaries down. And in the majority of 
secondary schools in this country to-day no pecuniary in- 
ducement is offered the intending teacher to take a college 



TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 29 

course. On the contrary there is every reason — uncer- 
tain tenure of office, political favoritism, and the like — 
why the average teacher should invest the least possible 
amount of paying capital. Indeed, so lightly is the 
higher education regarded that it is a question whether 
the average teacher who must depend on the average 
salary can afford to spend the time and money necessary 
in acquiring the college degree. If this be true, or any- 
where near the truth, then secondary education in America 
is in desperate straits. 

A need for craftsmanship. — The educational welfare 
of the country obviously demands that pubHc opinion 
recognize a higher standard of professional merit. Public 
opinion, however, is a shrewd judge of merit of any kind. 
With respect to teachers as in other matters, Lincoln's 
aphorism is true: " You can fool some of the people all of 
the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you 
cannot fool all of the people all of the time." The college 
graduate has been carefully weighed these many years 
past, and too frequently he has been found wanting. The 
specialist and the normal-school graduate have also been 
tested and the popular verdict is that they, too, are poor 
craftsmen. But with nothing better in sight and with no 
recognized standard of professional fitness, the school 
board and the wage they offer have come to be the con- 
trolling power. Moreover, it is evident, I think, that 
this condition of affairs cannot be materially changed so 
long as the chief factors in the problem remain the same. 
Our only hope lies in the introduction of a new factor more 
powerful thaa any now existing — the professionally 
trained teacher specially fitted for secondary work. 



3© THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Training secondary-school specialists. — It may be 

argued that inasmuch as the cost of a college education 
even now tends to exclude the best material from the 
majority of schools, no further expense can reasonably be 
expected by way of special preparation. While I ac- 
knowledge the strength of the argument and fully realize 
that professional standards must ultimately conform to 
economic laws I must still insist that a distinctly good 
thing appeals powerfully to the common sense of the 
American people. And if the American people see that 
a thing is worth having they know how to pay for it with- 
out grumbhng. The better class of secondary schools, 
the country over, pays fair salaries and insists on getting 
the ablest teachers. The very fact that competition for 
these positions is so disagreeably keen is the surest guar- 
antee of a better system of training teachers for secondary 
schools. An annually increasing number of college grad- 
uates learn from experience that the best preparation 
they can make is none too good for the places they desire 
to fill. They cannot afford to compete, other things 
being equal, with those whose preparation has been less 
expensive than theirs; the only hope of the ambitious col- 
legian is to put himself distinctly above his competitors 
in his chosen field. He must do as the business man does 
under analogous circumstances: increase his capital and 
make ready for a bigger business. This is the oppor- 
tunity of the departments of pedagogy and of the teach- 
ers' colleges. It is precisely this condition of affairs which 
makes possible for the first time in America a serious con- 
sideration of ideal methods of training teachers for 
secondary schools. 



TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 3 1 

Essentials for teachers. — But what is the ideal prep- 
aration for such teachers? First let me premise that the 
only method for us is to build on what we have, meet the 
demands of the times, while aiming at something better. 
Present conditions seem to me to indicate four qualities 
preeminently desired in the teacher: (i) general knowledge, 
(2) professional knowledge, (3) special knowledge, and 
(4) skill in teaching. The inability of the average teacher 
to present these four qualities in due proportion is the 
principal cause of the prevailing chaos in secondary 
education. 

An intellectual perspective. — First, general knowledge. 
Four years ago the Sub-Committee of Fifteen reported that 
" The degree of scholarship required for secondary teachers 
is by common consent fixed at a collegiate education. No 
one — with rare exceptions — should be employed to teach 
in a high school who has not this fundamental prepara- 
tion." Such a qualification seems reasonable enough. 
The liberal culture implied in four years of training in 
advance of the grades to be taught is surely not too 
much to require from every applicant for secondary teach- 
ing. The fact that the secondary teacher is to some 
degree a specialist, that he knows his subject and exercises 
considerable ingenuity in satisfying the requirements 
of college entrance or some examining board, is no indica- 
tion that he has a world- view of sufficient breadth to justify 
him in attempting the training of youth or that he has an 
understanding of related studies sufficient to enable him 
to teach - his own subject in a scientific manner. The 
inspiring influence that comes from well-developed manhood 
or womanhood taught to view the subject matter of 



32 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

secondary education in a comparative manner, trained 
to see the relationships everywhere existing in the various 
spheres of knowledge — yes, the unity pervading all 
knowledge — is an influence that the secondary school 
can ill afford to neglect. 

A knowledge of educational needs and problems. — 
Second, professional knowledge. It is equally important 
that the secondary teacher be able to view his own subject 
and the entire course of instruction in its relations to the 
child and to society, of which the child is a part. A 
teacher may be able to teach his subject never so well, 
may even have the reputation of being a distinguished 
educator, yet his life long be a teacher of Latin, or physics, 
or history, rather than a teacher of children. The true 
educator must know the nature of mind; he must under- 
stand the process of learning, the formation of ideals, 
the development of will, and the growth of character. 
The secondary teacher needs particularly to know the 
psychology of the adolescent period — that stormy period 
in which the individual first becomes self-conscious and 
struggles to express his own personality. But more than 
man as an individual the teacher needs to know the nature 
of man as a social being. No knowledge, I believe, is of 
more worth to the secondary teacher than the knowledge 
of what standards of culture have prevailed in the past 
or now exist among various peoples, their ideals of life, 
and their methods of training the young to assume the 
duties of life. Such study of the history of education is 
more than a study of scholastic institutions, of didactic 
precepts, or of the theories of educationists; it is KuUur- 
Geschichte with special reference to educational needs 



TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 33 

and educational problems. It gives that unifying view 
of our professional work without which it is idle to talk 
of a science or a system of education; it prepares the way 
for the only philosophy of education which is worth teach- 
ing. Under professional knowledge I should also include 
such information as can be gained from a study of school 
economy, school hygiene, and the organization, super- 
vision, and management of schools and school systems 
at home and abroad. Some of this technical knowledge 
is indispensable for all teachers; all that can be gained is 
not too much for those who will become leaders in the field. 
But the least professional knowledge that should be deemed 
acceptable is an appreciation of the physical conditions 
essential to success in school work and a thorough under- 
standing of psychology and its applications in teaching, 
of the history of education from the cultural standpoint, 
and of the philosophic principles that determine all 
education. 

Specialized training. — The strongest argument that 
can be urged against the average college graduate is that 
he has nothing to teach. The argument applies with 
even greater force to the normal-school graduate, however 
well he may be equipped on the professional side. Neither 
liberal culture nor technical skill can at all replace that 
solid substratum of genuine scholarship on which all true 
secondary education rests. A teacher with nothing to 
teach is an anomaly that needs no explanation. And I 
count that knowledge next to nothing which must be 
bolstered up by midnight study to hide its defects from a 
high-school class. No one who knows the scope, purpose, 
and methods of collegiate instruction, no one famihar 

TREND IN ED. — 3 



34 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

with the work of the normal school, will posit for a moment 
that such training necessarily gives any remarkable degree 
of special knowledge. I say this without any disrespect 
either to the college or the normal school; it is not the first 
and foremost duty of either of these institutions to turn 
out critical scholars or speciaHsts in some small field. 
But special scholarship, I maintain, is an absolute necessity 
in the qualifications for secondary teaching. Without it 
the teacher becomes a slave to manuals and textbooks; 
his work degenerates into formal routine with no life, no 
spirit, no educative power, because he knows no better 
way; the victims of his ignorance rise up to call him 
anything but blessed, and take their revenge as citizens 
in ignoring altogether professional knowledge in the 
conduct of public-school affairs — • because they, too, 
know no better way. Now as never before, do we need to 
emphasize the possession of special scholarship as an 
essential prerequisite to secondary teaching. It would 
seem that no argument were necessary to convince a Yankee 
that there is virtue in perfect tools, but somehow the idea 
is abroad that the perfect tool is the perfect textbook. 
Now is an opportune time to convince the American people 
that it is "the man behind the gun," rather than the gun 
itself, which counts. 

A technic of teaching. — It is safe to say that no 
quality is more earnestly desired in the teacher, or more 
persistently sought for, than the technical ability to teach. 
The first question asked of an applicant is not " Has he 
had a hberal education?" or "What is his professional 
knowledge?" or "Has he anything to teach?" but this: 
" Can he teach? " The popular mind fails to recognize the 



TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 35 

interdependence of these qualities, and failing in this it 
bases judgment of a teacher's ability on the relatively 
non-essential. Ability to maintain order in the classroom, 
to get work out of his pupils, to satisfy casual supervisors 
and examiners, to keep fine records and to mystify parents — 
this too frequently passes for ability to teach. Hov^ 
seldom, indeed, is a teacher tested by his ability to get 
something into his pupils, by his ability to impart his 
knowledge in a way that shall broaden their horizons, 
extend their interests, strengthen their characters, and 
rouse within them the desire to lead a pure, noble, unselfish 
life. School-keeping is not necessarily school-teaching. 
The technical ability to teach includes both. The art of 
teaching is mimicry, a dangerous gift, unless it be founded 
on the science of teaching which takes account of the end 
and means of education and the nature of the material 
to be taught. School-keeping may be practically the same 
for all classes of pupils, but true teaching must always vary 
with surrounding conditions and the ends to be attained. 
Graduates of colleges and normal schools alike must fail 
in technical skill if they teach as they have been taught. 
The work of the secondary school is unique. It requires 
an arrangement and presentation of the subject matter 
of instruction in a way unknown in elementary education 
and unheeded in most college teaching; it requires tact, 
judgment, and discipHnary powers pecuUar to the manage- 
ment of youth. Herein is the need of that technical skill 
which is not, as has been well said, " a part of the natural 
equipment of every educated person." 

Too poor to afford poor teaching. — The question before 
us is: How can these qualifications best be secured? There 



36 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

may be, however, a preliminary question which some will 
desire to have answered: What is the relative importance 
of these qualifications, if all cannot be secured? In at- 
tempting an answer, I am well aware of the difficulties 
presented by actual conditions in various parts of the 
country, even by conditions which occasionally arise in 
almost any school, and more particularly by situations 
presented in the individual characteristics of teachers. 
There are schools in all parts of the country (one might 
almost say, all schools in some parts of the country) which 
think that they cannot afford good teachers. To such 
schools I can only say that they are too poor to be able 
to afford poor teachers. It is our business here to assert 
that the best teacher is always the cheapest; and if our 
influence has any weight, it should be used energetically 
wherever it is proposed to employ a poor teacher merely 
because the poor teacher will work on a lower salary. 

Natural endowment of the teacher. — The personality 
of the teacher, however, is another matter. There are 
persons who might conceivably possess all of the quali- 
fications which I have called essential, and yet be unfit 
to train animals, to say nothing of teaching children. 
In fact, these qualifications which I have enumerated 
are really conditioned by certain universal human at- 
tributes which are prerequisite to the truest success in any 
vocation in life. The person who does not first of all 
have high moral worth, intellectual honesty, fertility of 
imaginadon, industry, sympathy, tact, and common 
sense can never become a good teacher, and a notable 
deficiency in any of these attributes will assuredly prevent 
a person from becoming a great teacher, regardless of 



TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 37 

professional training — the best that can be given. No 
one knows better than we do how absolutely essential is 
the right personality in the teacher. This knowledge, 
however, should not make us unappreciative of profes- 
sional training. The rather should we see in profes- 
sional training the means whereby native impulses are 
made available and directed systematically toward the 
highest ends of education. It can do no harm for us to 
exalt the native qualities in a teacher's equipment, but 
it can do no good to overestimate them. School ofl&cers 
too often exhibit a lack of intellectual honesty or common 
sense when they make professional qualifications of sec- 
ondary importance in the selection of teachers. From 
that position it is only one step to personal and partisan 
favoritism; for no school principal or superintendent can 
make a strong case against political interference in school 
affairs, if he himself does not consider professional training 
an essential article in his educational creed. I yield to 
none in my appreciation of what is called " personality " 
in the teacher, but I maintain that the " personal " and the 
" professional " are coordinate, and that both are essential. 
To make the " personal " subordinate to the '' professional " 
may be a sin; but to subordinate the " professional " to the 
" personal " is a crime. 

Selecting a professional equipment. — What, then, of 
the four qualifications which I have enumerated as essen- 
tial in the professional training of a secondary teacher? 
Is any one of greater relative importance than any other 
one? First, it may be said that a college course nowadays 
gives no assurance of general knowledge. There is con- 
siderable justice, I fear, in that claim. Our colleges are 



38 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

all pretty thoroughly inoculated with the germs of the 
elective systems, and some of them have already developed 
into serious cases. In fact, it has become so epidemic 
that it seems useless longer to maintain a quarantine 
against the contagion. However, this movement may not 
be a plague except to those who do not know how to take 
advantage of it. It is true that never before has such 
wealth of opportunity been presented in higher education. 
The list of courses offered in our largest universities is 
certainly bewildering to one who is in doubt either of his 
own abilities or of his future needs. So long as I do not 
know myself, or what I shall become, how can I choose 
intelligently from the tender made by a modern university? 
Individual responsibility. — And, from another stand- 
point, it may be asked: How can a college faculty intel- 
ligently prescribe a curriculum for an unknown person 
bound for an end that is also unknown? It is the com- 
plexity of modern life that affords the fullest justification 
of the elective system in higher education. But there is 
, no justification for free election when a definite profession 
is in view, nor should there be any serious doubt of what 
subjects are of most worth in the training of a lawyer, a 
physician, or a teacher. And, in the case of the teacher, 
most subjects of the college course enter into his profes- 
sional equipment. They are in part the means and in- 
struments which he must later employ in professional 
service. Hence I do not hesitate to say that the collegiate 
education of the secondary teacher should be general in 
character and liberal in its nature and influence. More- 
over, it is not the duty of the college or university to make 
courses of study suited to the needs of teaching or of any 



TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 39 

particular profession; it is our business as teachers to know 
what is best for those who will come after us, and it is our 
duty as a profession to insist upon public recognition 
of our claims. In other words, it is absurd for us to 
criticize the college for not giving us what we want and in 
the way we want it; our part is to know what we want and 
to see to it that we get it. 

Normal-school limitations. — There is an assumption in 
what I have said that a college course is an integral part 
of the professional training of a secondary teacher. After 
due allowance has been made for all the defects of col- 
legiate education, it must still be acknowledged that there 
is no other institution which can more satisfactorily 
give the general knowledge so essential in a teacher's 
equipment. In my opinion, it is scarcely worth while to 
discuss this point. Nevertheless, the practice of some 
normal schools warrants the belief that a different con- 
clusion is possible. I fail to see on what grounds such 
practice can be defended. A normal school that sets 
itself up to train teachers for secondary schools either 
greatly magnifies its office or deliberately stultifies the 
profession which it represents. Of course, I do not refer 
to those institutions which maintain academic courses 
equal in scope and quality to college courses, and which 
provide for four years of instruction in advance of the 
secondary school. A college degree is no criterion of 
excellence, nor is it necessary that the institution be known 
as a college. What is wanted is an education broad 
enough and liberal enough to qualify the teacher to select 
and train leaders for the coming generation. Such an 
education surely cannot be given by an institution that 



40 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

limits its field to the needs of a single profession, whether 
that profession be dentistry, medicine, engineering, or 
elementary teaching. Not all of a college education 
comes from the classroom; an important part of it comes 
from the associations of persons with widely differing 
interests and ambitions. A professional school is narrow- 
ing in its influence. A normal school, therefore, if true 
to its own high calhng, cannot be expected to afford a 
liberal education or to meet the requirements in general 
knowledge which the secondary teacher should have. 

In the second place, no ordinary normal school can 
sufficiently equip the secondary teacher in special scholar- 
ship. And the secondary teacher who is not a specialist 
is an elementary teacher who has mistaken his calling. 
I am well aware that there are schools which expect 
teachers to teach anything and everything, but unless 
such schools can secure teachers who are masters of any- 
thing and everything, it is a misnomer to call them sec- 
ondary schools. The age of pupils is no guide to the grade 
of a school. If it were, the evening schools where adults 
learn their A B C's would be called " evening univer- 
sities." It will be a glorious day in American education 
when we have teachers thoroughly capable of teaching 
any subject in the secondary-school curriculum, but until 
we can be certain that such universal specialization is an 
assured fact, we would serve our profession better to insist 
on sound scholarship in one or two subjects. As things 
are now in most states, it is a disgrace to the teaching 
profession that we teachers make no eft'orts to distinguish 
between the competent and the incompetent. We even 
look complacently upon the efforts of politicians and law- 



TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 4I 

makers to fix the metes and bounds of our own profession. 
While it may not be proper for us to adopt trades-union 
methods, it is certainly most becoming in us to uphold 
the dignity of our profession by advocating at all times 
those standards which we know to be right — right not 
only for us as teachers, but right also for those whom we 
instruct. And I know I am right when I say that the 
secondary teacher should be master of every subject which 
he is called upon to teach. Moreover, I am convinced that 
the patrons of our secondary schools will believe us when we 
say it honestly; and when they are convinced, the means 
for securing such teachers will promptly be provided. 

Finally, we have to consider the aim of the whole matter 
in what I have called the technical quaUfications of the 
teacher. The public is coming to recognize, what some 
of us have long known, that trained teachers are superior 
to novices. That graduates of normal schools are in 
demand for secondary-school positions does credit to pub- 
lic opinion; that they should be encouraged to accept 
such positions without having made adequate collegiate 
preparation is not creditable to the normal schools. The 
fact is that both collegiate and normal training are essen- 
tial. The problem is how to secure both. 

Meeting the emergency. — I can see only two ways 
that are practicable. One way is to provide in the normal 
schools a distinct course to train college graduates for 
secondary schools; the alternative is to establish, in con- 
nection with universities, professional schools for teachers. 
Either plan is difficult of execution. College graduates 
do not assimilate readily with normal-school students; 
and even if special courses were provided, it would 



42 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

require a change in policy and an elevation in standards 
which few normal schools could or should be expected 
to meet. On the other hand, it ought to be perfectly 
clear that a chair of pedagogy — even when it is called 
" education " or " the science and art of teaching " — is no 
adequate substitute for a professional school for teachers. 
Sixty years ago there were such professorships in law, 
but to-day we have law schools. How long must we wait 
for "schools of education"? The universities must pro- 
vide not only courses in the history and philosophy of 
education, in psychology, and its applications in teaching, 
in school economy, and the like, but they must also provide 
for extensive and thoroughgoing practical work. A 
professional school for teachers is no more complete or 
adequate without schools of observation and practice 
than is a medical school complete and adequate without 
hospital and clinical laboratory. 

So far as secondary-school work is concerned, therefore, 
either the normal school must raise its standards and pre- 
pare to enter a new field, or the universities must deal 
with teachers as honestly and hberally as they do with 
lawyers and physicians. Personally, I think the uni- 
versities are the better fitted to take over this work, and it 
seems to me that they are making very satisfactory prog- 
ress. But there is chance for great improvement, and this 
body should let it be known that it appreciates the gifts 
received, but never ceases praying for stiU greater 
blessings. 

An insurance of professional advancement. — A survey 
of the field of secondary education discloses that these 
four essential qualifications of the secondary tcnr^-rr are 



TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 43 

everywhere recognized in practice. The difficulty is that 
few teachers unite them in due proportion. The thoroughly 
trained teacher, trained by study and tested by experience, 
has no difficulty in finding employment or holding his 
place once he finds it. Those who have positions to fill 
are eagerly scanning the professional horizon and are 
thankful for some refreshing sign, even though it is no 
larger than a man's hand. The function of the teachers' 
college and the university department of pedagogy is to 
establish a better code of professional signs and to insure 
more perfect realization of professional promise. 

The task of teachers' colleges. — I am not of those 
who believe that legislation is the only remedy, or the best 
remedy, for existing evils — social or educational. In 
face of the prevaiUng economic conditions and with the 
present supply of secondary teachers, it is useless to urge 
the enactment of laws requiring a higher standard of 
academic or professional qualifications. Change the eco- 
nomic conditions, or improve the quality of professional 
preparation, and, I believe, legislation will follow as a mat- 
ter of course or be found altogether unnecessary. Nor can 
the economic conditions affecting secondary teachers be 
materially changed until the public comes to recognize 
that we have laborers worthy of a better hire. In a word, 
the burden of improving the condition of the secondary 
teacher in America rests primarily upon the colleges and 
universities of America. And this is the task which the 
departments of education and the teachers' colleges must 
assume. 

How is it being done? First of all it must be remarked 
that by far the larger number of colleges giving courses 



44 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

in education seem to consider the work in its non-profes- 
sional aspect. The science and art of education are re- 
garded as subjects for research and investigation, or as 
means of liberal culture, akin to history and political 
science. Such work has its place, but unsupported, it 
plays no very important rdle in training teachers for sec- 
ondary schools. 

I find that the institutions giving professional courses 
in education for intending teachers in secondary schools 
are in general agreement as to what should be done, 
although few of them are able to realize their ideals. The 
diploma, or teacher's certificate, which is granted on the 
completion of a prescribed course, in the best colleges 
requires as a rule the bachelor's degree and a certain amount 
of work in the history and philosophy of education and in 
educational psychology and practice in teaching. 

An educational code. — The best legislation which can 
be given us is that which will require secondary teachers 
to earn certificates in the subjects which they teach and 
which will prohibit their teaching subjects in which they 
are not certificated. 

The lowest requirements which we can consistently 
make for such a diploma or certificate are as follows: 

(i) The candidate must be a college graduate, at least 
when he receives the diploma, if not when entering upon the 
course, or have the equivalent of a college education. 

(2) He must satisfactorily complete courses in (a) 
the history of education, (b) the philosophy of education, 
(c) psychology and its applications in teaching, and (d) 
school economy, especially school hygiene — an allotment, 
say, of eight hours a week throughout one year. 



TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 45 

(3) As evidence of the special knowledge required in 
each subject in which a diploma is sought the candidate 
should be able to show the equivalent of at least three 
years' collegiate study of that subject — three to five 
hours a week. But whatever be the requirement in 
credit-hours, provision should be made for securing a 
sufficient degree of special scholarship as a prerequisite 
to what I consider the gateway to actual teaching, viz.: 
a course in the special methods of teaching each subject 
elected. Such a course may very properly be conducted 
wholly or in part by the university department which is 
responsible for the academic training in subject matter. 

(4) The candidate must be given opportunity to observe 
good teaching, study its methods under guidance, and 
finally give instruction under normal conditions long enough 
to demonstrate his abiHty to teach. 

This plan will enable a thoroughly good college student 
who chooses his electives wisely to secure a teacher's 
diploma in one or two subjects, e. g., Latin and Greek, 
physics and chemistry, at the same time that he gets his 
bachelor's degree. For the college graduate it provides 
a one-year professional course which will enable him, 
granted that he has the requisite academic preparation, 
to secure a diploma in two or three related subjects. 

A need for united effort. — I am happy to say that the 
scheme just outlined is no Utopian dream; it is being 
realized wholly or in part in several of our universities. 
That it is entirely practicable I am able to affirm from my 
own experience in Columbia University. We have en- 
countered many difficulties, to be sure, and I suspect my 
colleagues in other institutions have troubles of their own, 



46 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

but I am confident that if the plan which I have outlined 
is one that should succeed, it can be worked out success- 
fully in many places. It is a work, however, that demands 
our united efforts. 



CHAPTER III 

THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF EXAMINATIONS FOR 
ADMISSION TO COLLEGE 

EXAMINATIONS are presumably means to an end, 
not an end in themselves. Their value will be 
determined by the service they render in the at- 
tainment of the desired ends. In school work the interested 
parties are the pupil who is entitled to make the most 
of himself, the teacher whose professional reputation 
is at stake, and the school or educational system which 
is supported directly or indirectly by the public for the 
public good. 

There can be no doubt of the educational value of 
examinations to those who conduct the examinations. 
Our daily experience shows conclusively enough that 
success in life depends largely upon the critical acumen 
which precedes and influences judgment. Perhaps this 
is one reason (it is hardly becoming in me to make the 
suggestion) why colleges cling so tenaciously to the privilege 
of examining candidates for admission. 

Ability to pass examinations an asset. — But seriously, 
it is good for a boy occasionally to have to pass formal 
examinations. He may some day want to be a civil 
servant — a policeman, a street sweeper, or a teacher 
(this is not intended to be an anticlimax) — and then he 

A revised reprint from the School Review, 1903, used by courtesy of the pub- 
lishers. 

47 



48 THE TREND EST AMERICAN EDUCATION 

will be required to come to terms with a list of questions 
and an examining board. Moreover, he will have frequent 
use in life for the ability to conceal his own ignorance. 
And when we consider, in the words of Richard Baxter, 
" how very little it is that we know in comparison to that 
we are ignorant of," it will be seen that the abihty to veneer 
this vast body of ignorance with a respectable coating 
of usable information is an accomplishment not lightly 
to be regarded. It might also be mentioned in this appre- 
ciation of the educational value of examinations {for those 
who are examined) that there is nothing more likely to 
take the conceit out of a fellow than a try at a paper set 
by persons whom he doesn't know in a subject which he 
thinks he does know. A modern philosopher has remarked : 
"A reasonable amount of fleas is good for a dog; they 
keep him f'm broodin' on bein' a dog." 

Testing instructional efficiency. — The topic, as I under- 
stand it, excludes the consideration of examinations given 
in the course of instruction for the purpose of making 
that instruction more efficient. Such tests as written 
recitations, quizzes, term and final examinations, and the 
like are of the greatest value to the teacher who is really 
concerned in educating his pupils. These examinations 
are indispensable; they need no argument to justify the 
position they hold in our scheme of instruction. But 
examinations conducted by outside authorities are in 
another category. They, too, may have a place and be 
valuable, but the justification must come from some other 
source. 

Valuation of extra-mural tests. — From the stand- 
point of the pupil, examinations conducted by persons 



THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF EXAMINATIONS 49 

outside the school are far and away more harmful than 
helpful. I grant that they do tend to keep lazy boys 
up to the scratch, to show the conceited how Httle they 
know, to train the nervous and scatter-brained to hold 
themselves in and do something on time: in short, they 
do help a boy to pull himself together and concentrate 
himself on a task which requires all strength and ingenuity. 
But what is it all worth in comparison with the attendant 
evils? The tendency to substitute for high ideals in 
scholarship a mere caricature of learning, to put forward 
a mechanical process as the summum honum of the school 
course, to replace clear thinking by guesswork, to regard 
the examiner as a person to be satisfied at any cost — 
honestly, if possible; dishonestly, if necessary. Any 
scheme that puts a premium on success at a particular 
time or under peculiar conditions, strains the moral fiber. 
It is certainly good for moral fiber to withstand a strain; 
but, when for the sake of reward or fear of failure the 
strain becomes unendurable, the result is altogether bad. 
The recent experience of an eastern preparatory school 
is by no means exceptional, save in the extent of the 
fault and the publicity given to it. The relation between 
candidate and examiner does not promote high moral 
standards, witness the need of proctors and the unwil- 
lingness of boys, even college students, to assume the moral 
responsibility of taking examinations without watchers. 
The overseers of a New England college have recently 
published the following criticism of prevailing student 
customs : 

It is well understood that the student body in most colleges 
has always sanctioned a highly artificial code of morals which 

TREND IN ED. — 4 



50 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

thoughtful men would repudiate at once in the domain of busi- 
ness or of society. This peculiar code, which tolerates cheating 
in examinations, justifies the destruction of private property in 
the celebration of athletic victories, encourages boorish manners 
and various forms of reprehensible conduct and causes strained 
relations between professors and students, was perhaps a natural 
outgrowth of the inflexible curriculum and the paternal form of 
college government which prevailed until comparatively recent 
years. 

The situation is a relic of that educational barbarism 
which assumed no honesty in the scholar, and no sympathy 
in the master. 

On this point, therefore, let there be no misunder- 
standing. To the boy who is examined by outside author- 
ities for the sake of personal gam, there can be no benefit 
worth mentioning which cannot be secured equally well 
in some less reprehensible way; but, on the contrary, 
the process tends to lower our intellectual and moral 
standards, a fact which, through long familiarity, we have 
come to minimize or to disregard entirely. 

The need for outside examinations. — But, as I have 
said, there is a place for examinations, and in that place 
they have a distinct value. Outside examinations are 
imperative whenever the secondary schools are unable 
or unwilling to assume the responsibility of meeting the 
requirements for admission to colleges and universities. 
If good work is to be done in our colleges and professional 
schools, a suitable foundation must be laid in the field 
of secondary education. If the secondary schools will 
not, or cannot, assure the strength of that foundation, 
then it is imperative that the higher institutions impose 
their own tests. Weak schools, of course, may be left out 



THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF EXAMINATIONS 5 1 

of consideration. But why, it may be asked, should any 
secondary school refuse to certify to the strength of its 
candidates, if it is capable of doing so? Several reasons 
at once suggest themselves : lack of knowledge of what the 
higher education really demands, modesty in proclaiming 
one's own belief, unwillingness to be tacitly responsible for 
work over which one has no control, inability to withstand 
the importunity of ambitious parents, adherence to col- 
legiate customs, and so on through a long catalogue. We 
have all heard them many times, and in many forms, vary- 
ing from the modest excuse to the utterly imbecile apology. 

Shifting responsibilities. — So trivial do some of the 
reasons seem, and so out of harmony with the character 
of the men who put them forth, that I have concluded 
to look deeper for the true cause of the apparent unwil- 
lingness of certain secondary-school masters to stand 
sponsor for their scholars. When the principal of a large 
high school tells me that he has more important work to 
do than to satisfy the crotchets of some college professor, 
I can see an obvious reason for his position, but when the 
master of a school avowedly preparatory to college, and 
well assured of its patronage, tells me that he prefers 
outside judgment as to which of his pupils shall go to col- 
lege, I am at a loss to understand his meaning without 
appeal to first principles. 

English educational ideals. — The great public schools 
of England — Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and the rest — 
have long been ideal fitting schools. Their ideal is, I 
need hardly say, out-and-out English; it is not French; 
it is not German; it is not American, but it is a type which 
finds sympathy and support everywhere. 



52 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

An Englishman, high in the councils of the government, 
has said: 

" We have never made an idol of intellectual instruction im- 
parted in day schools. In other words, our great educators have 
upheld the belief (though we are far from having lived up to all 
that the belief implies) that a school ought to be something higher 
than a knowledge factory; that what a man is matters a great 
deal more than what he knows: That wise actions involve many 
vita! elements besides intellectual attainments; and that educa- 
tion, in the true sense of the word, is an atmosphere and a dis- 
cipline affecting heart and mind and body, and neglecting none 
of the three." i 

Again he says: 

" We are in the habit of liking our national life to be so 
arranged as to allow as much freedom as possible for every 
gifted individual to express himself according to his inborn 
faculty. This means that we prefer untidy freedom to an immacu- 
lately neat system of restraints. We resent the idea of pressing 
boys or girls to learn a great deal at school. We believe in the 
value of a good deal of well-employed idleness during early years." - 

In other words, the master has much more to do in school 
than to give instruction, and for the boy there is a larger 
and more important life than the life of the classroom. 
Kipling portrays that life most admirably in The Brushwood 
Boy in his description of Georgie Cottar's school hfe. We 
find the boy at first taking part in athletics; growing 
strong because of the out-door exercise, and at the same 
time Mdnning confidence in himself from his contact with 
his fellows. Later, he became head of the school and head 
of the house where he lived. It was then his duty to keep 
order among seventy boys, and to preserve the " tone " 
of the school. To Georgie, school was the place where 

' Dr. Sadler, Special Reports, Vol. IX, p. 9. "Ibid, p. 501. 



THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF EXAMINATIONS 53 

important things happened and where real situations 
arose which had to be met wisely; to him the school world 
was the real world. And the principal of the school, the 
Head, was always back of him, guiding him by sugges- 
tion rather than by direct advice; bringing him to realize 
that boys and men are very similar, and that the ability 
to manage the one, will, when developed, become the 
abiUty to direct the other. 

During the last six months in school he was made 
familiar with the types of answers most pleasing to his 
examiners, so that he might be passed on to another 
school which would more directly fit him for taking up 
a work in the world. But the important thing was that 
all the while, his character was gradually being formed 
by contact with the other boys and by the influence of 
his masters. " He did not know that he bore with him 
from school and college a character worth much fine 
gold, but was pleased to find his mess so kindly." 

This little sketch of KipHng's is, I believe, the best 
portrait of the English public school in existence. He 
puts duty, common sense, character, in the foregound, as 
the great ends to be desired in education. 

The master as a righteous judge. — Such an ideal of 
education as this demands, indeed, exceptional men as 
teachers. They are men who cannot be harnessed to a 
system or hampered by restraints. The master is the 
school, and because masters differ, the schools will not con- 
form to an accepted norm. A few succeed ; others overreach 
themselves and are lamentable failures. Under such a sys- 
tem intellectual attainment ranks as one aim among many, 
and it is conceivable that it may not always be the most 



54 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

important one. Strength of character, honesty, integrity, 
physical prowess, the abiHty to lead one's fellows, cannot 
be relegated to second rank in any system of education. 
Moreover, the intimacy between master and scholar in a 
good home school — an intimacy which, in the course of 
years, ripens into an affection that is akin to parental love — 
make it extremely difficult for the teacher to judge the 
boy from one standpoint only. He knows him too well; 
his faults and his virtues are spread before him in an open 
book. To single out one attainment on which to predict 
the future is to neglect others which will surely tell as time 
goes on. How can the master, under such conditions, 
be a righteous judge? So it happens that in such a system 
of education, examinations conducted by higher author- 
ities come easily and naturally to be the culmination of 
the school course. 

Limitations of boarding schools. — Say what we will 
about the English school system, we Americans do believe 
in the best ideals of English education. There is some- 
thing in " Tom Brown's School Days " which thrills us as 
schoolmasters even more thaa when we were schoolboys. 
We are ready to say, and we generally mean it, that what 
a man is is of far more consequence than what he knows. 
We believe that the making of man is the chief end of school 
work, and we are not unwilling to borrow methods from 
those who seem to be successful in making a certain type 
of Englishman. 

But notwithstanding our admiration for some things 
in English education, we cannot accept all that the system 
implies: class distinctions; "boarding schools for those 
who are to be leaders in Church and State, day schools of 



THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF EXAMINATIONS 55 

an inferior sort for the masses;" separation of the sexes 
whenever possible; interference of a state church; low 
ideals of scholarship. Some of those we regard not so 
much a fault of Enghsh education as of Enghsh life, but 
bad teaching is certainly the work of poor teachers. 

A comparison of types. — It has been remarked that in 
judging a teacher, the German asks, " What does he know? " 
the American, "What can he do?" the Englishman, "Is 
he a good fellow? " Dr. Sadler, whose office in England 
corresponds to that of the commissioner of education 
in this country, says on this point: 

No schoolmasters in the worid lavish more time and thought 
and strength on the care of their pupils than the English secondary 
schoolmasters. On what may be called the pastoral side of their 
office, they are beyond rivalry. . . . But because the English 
secondary schoolmaster so often lives among his pupUs from 
morning to night, he has far less time and strength to spare for 
professional studies than has his continental counterpart. He is 
much more the friend of his pupils, and much fresher in his sym- 
pathies with the interests of young people. But he is far less of a 
student; as a rule, is much less learned; and is often a hardened 
amateur in his methods of teaching. . . . Clumsy, antiquated 
methods of instruction are far too common in our secondary 
schools.^ 

It is for an intellectual tradition, as persistent and 
congem'al as the ethical tradition which characterizes 
the best English education, that Dr. Sadler pleads : 

The development of individual intelligence is largely a question 
of methods of teaching, but also of choice of studies. Educational 
efficiency of the best kind depends on having small classes; highly 
trained teachers; skillful methods of teaching; not too many sub- 

' Dr. Sadler, Special Reports, Vol. IX, pp. 10, 11. 



56 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

jects; the right order of subjects; the right choice ot subjects; and 
the avoidance of hurry; of excessive competition, and of intellectual 
overstrain. . . . The keen study of methods by teachers is 
one of the best signs of educational progress. But the aim should 
be, not to enable the pupil to win a prize or a scholarship by a cer- 
tain time, or to pass in some competitive examination (though I 
am far from meaning to imply that all competition is bad or that 
aU examinations could be dispensed with) but to start him in the 
right way of learning things for himself, to arouse his interest in 
important subjects, and to give him a sure foundation of accurate 
and well-directed knowledge Large numbers of our secondary 
schools are worried by a superfluity of examinations. It would 
be far better to have some well-defined intellectual aim for each 
school, and to allow the teachers to work steadily and quietly 
toward that aim.^ 

I have quoted thus at length from a high English au- 
thority to show how conscious some Englishmen are of 
the great .defects in Enghsh education. His verdict is, 
in a word, (i) low ideals of scholarship and (2) bad teach- 
ing. Both lead naturally and inevitably to the curse of 
examinations systematized and conducted by authority 
of the state or university. 

The American ideal. — We Americans are, as Mr. 
Kipling puts it, " mixed peoples with all the vices of men 
and boys combined." But along vidth the vices go virtues, 
which our schoolmasters steadily keep to the front. We 
believe in the doctrine of equal opportunity for all men, 
and for every boy and girl who can use it we believe it an 
educational ladder reaching from the kindergarten to the 
university. That ideal at least is not English. We 
believe in helping each pupil to make the most of his op- 
portunities and to become that which he wishes to be, 

1 Dr. Sadler, Special Reports, Vol. IX, pp. 163, 164. 



THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF EXAMINATIONS 57 

providing his aim is not too obviously harmful to his 
fellows. We set up no barriers, social or otherwise, to 
hamper his progress, and we never regard his career as 
ended until he is safely under ground. There is no " cul- 
mination " in American life short of death itself. Our 
school system, therefore, if it is to fit for American life, 
can have no bounds. We have no right to speak of the 
" culmination " of a school course, unless we mean thereby, 
in college parlance, a " commencement." And least of 
all should we think of examinations as the culmination 
of anything educational. 

Development of an educational organic unity. — Let us 
reason together about this thing — this relic of educational 
barbarism. It comes to us with the English stamp not 
yet effaced; it bespeaks a tradition of poor scholarship 
and bad teaching. It is enforced by institutions which 
are complacent enough to suppose that scholarships can be 
erected on a secondary education, the sole guarantee of 
which is an examination for college entrance, or in Heu 
thereof, as was once remarked in a meeting of this asso- 
ciation, " the good looks of the candidate." Is it not 
more reasonable to suppose that when we succeed in 
evolving an American system of education — really 
American, I mean, not a mere cross or hybrid — it will be a 
unity, a system necessarily made up of constituent parts, 
but so nicely adjusted that part will work with part in 
organic unison? When that time comes I venture to pre- 
dict we shall hear nothing of examination for admission 
to any grade or to any school, but much will be said of 
examinations for instruction and promotion. The ele- 
mentary school will pass on its pupils into the secondary 



58 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

school, and the secondary school will admit them to 
college, if that be their proper aim. Or, more properly 
speaking, scholars who are let out of one grade or school 
will admit themselves to the grade or school next higher. 
Already we hear it said that graduates of any good four- 
year high-school course should find a college course open 
to them. I accept the statement, and should be glad 
to add to it these words — " without examination by 
college authorities." 

A necessary evil. — But before these words can be 
added, the American public must see to it that the high- 
school course is really good, and that the teachers, in 
point of character, scholarship, and professional ability, 
are really worthy of the positions they occupy, and of the 
hire which they ought to have. In the meantime, it is 
our duty to be righteously discontented with our present 
schemes of state inspection, regents' examinations, college 
entrance boards, and the like, knowing them all to be dis- 
pensations of Providence, calculated to keep us humble, 
and fit us for a more blessed state. The millennium is 
not yet in sight, but the advance made in recent years 
in the matter of uniform entrance requirements, and 
especially in the establishment of the College Entrance 
Examination Board, is most gratifying. While we are 
waiting, let us be honest enough to confess that all these 
examination schemes are devices, as some say, to impress 
upon a doubting world the great importance of certain 
indispensable institutions of higher learning, or the ac- 
knowledgment, as others declare, of the shortcomings of 
American secondary schoolmasters. 

A problem for solution. — To sum up : Examinations 



THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF EXAMINATIONS 59 

must have a place in every scheme of instruction. Instruc- 
tion can proceed only when the extent and quality of the 
learner's knowledge is definitely understood. Every reci- 
tation, every review, is such an examination; further 
examinations of a formal sort are often desirable for the 
sake both of the teacher and of the pupil. But such ex- 
aminations are given by teachers within the school or school 
system and primarily for the purpose of instruction. 
Examinations by those outside the school, especially 
when given for the purpose of determining a pupil's 
ability to undertake an entirely new course of instruction, 
have no educational value for the pupil which cannot be 
secured equally well in some less reprehensible way. Such 
examinations, however, are practically necessary when 
intellectual attainment is not the only aim of school 
instruction, and both necessary and inevitable when that 
instruction is inefficient. Outside examinations are im- 
perative whenever the secondary schools are unable or 
unwilling to assume the responsibility of meeting the 
requirements for admission to colleges and universities. 
Until a norm of secondary instruction is established and 
generally recognized, college entrance examinations can- 
not be dispensed with. The sole object of this paper is 
to show that such examinations have no especial educa- 
tional value for those who are examined; they do have a 
distinct value in our school system and must be retained 
until some better plan is found for keeping weak schools 
up to grade and for the ehmination of bad teaching. The 
scheme of college entrance examinations is altogether a 
matter of temporary expediency. It tests merely the 
candidate's store of learning and to some extent his abihty 



6o THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

to use that learning; it does not measure his intellectual 
desires, his moral strength or his aesthetic taste. Mean- 
while it is our duty to find some way of assuring the intel- 
lectual ability which students must have on admission to 
college and at the same time of encouraging the preparatory 
schools to emphasize in their course of training the manly 
virtues and the liberal culture which all men need in life. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE OPPORTUNITIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF 
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE ^ 

A QUERY and a criticism. — " How is it that the 
United States can afford to pay a half dollar 
in wages when we pay a shilhng, and yet compete 
with us in the markets of the world? " This is a question 
that was addressed to industrial England by an English 
business man whose knowledge of industrial conditions 
in three continents qualifies him as an expert. When Mr. 
Mosely put that question he thought the answers could be 
found in American education. Accordingly, he invited 
a score or more of the leading teachers, ablest scholars, 
and keenest investigators of Great Britain to help him 
study American schools and methods of teaching. 

What was the result? In the report of the Mosely 
Commission we can see ourselves as others see us — some 
others, at any rate — critics who tell us some unpleasant 
truths. These EngHsh experts, to a man, declare that it 
is not because of our schools that we succeed; some of 
them insist that if we keep up the pace it will be in spite 
of our schools and schooling. What is it, then, that gives 
us such advantage of our old-world neighbors? One 
answer is as follows: 

"America's industry is what it is primarily because 
of the boundless energy, the restless enterprise, and the 

^The Commencement Address delivered at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, 1906. 

61 



62 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

capacity for strenuous work with which her people are 
endowed; and because these powers are stimulated to 
action by the marvelous opportunities for wealth pro- 
duction which the country offers. These conditions have 
determined the character of all American institutions — 
the schools included. The schools have not made the 
people what they are, but the people, being what they 
are, have made the schools." 

Moreover, it is pointed out that our present schools 
are too young to have had any perceptible influence on 
our industrial activity or social life. Our leaders of to-day 
were trained under the old regime or have come to us 
from abroad, some with good schooling, others with 
little of any kind. Our workmen, the best of them, are 
self- trained or imported ready-made. The only native 
quality that we apparently have or exercise is, as Professor 
Armstrong says, " cuteness." And in this respect school- 
ing is of little account. He says: 

" In point of fact, American cuteness would seem to 
be conditioned by environment rather than by school 
education. The country was settled by adventurous, 
high-minded men; the adventurous and restless spirits 
of Europe have been attracted there for generations past; 
the conditions have always been such as to develop enter- 
prise and to stimulate individuality and inventiveness: 
so that, during the whole period in which the continent 
has been gradually acquired and settled on, there has 
been a constant and invigorating struggle going on against 
nature in one form or another, the Indian probably having 
played no mean part in the education of the race. Such 
being the case, it is important to remember that some at 



OPPORTUNITIES OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 6t, 

least of these influences are now withdrawn and that de- 
velopment may, in consequence, be along different lines 
in future, especially as the enervating influence of machinery 
is also coming into play more and more." 

The causes of success. — In the introduction to this 
report Mr. Mosely discounts some of the findings of his 
experts. He points out that South Africa is a land of 
great opportunity, that it possesses enormous resources, 
that it has been settled by as brave a people as can be 
found anywhere, and that in all essential respects it is 
not unlike the United States or any other new country. 
Despite all this, he maintains, South Africa has not be- 
gotten great industrial leaders and that but for the trained 
American engineer South Africa would still be undeveloped 
and unproductive. He finds the secret of American 
success, therefore, in the American system of education. 

Here are three reasons given by keen men bent on 
finding the causes of American mdustrial success: (i) A 
golden opportunity in a new country marvelously rich 
in natural resources, (2) the disposition of the typical 
American to take chances, to play the game to the end 
whatever the odds; and (3) professional training directed 
to practical ends. 

No one can deny that these three causes have been 
potent factors in all our past. But what of the future? 
Is the opportunity what it once was? Will American 
shrewdness still find free scope? Shall we still have need 
of professional training? 

The period of rapid development. — Seventy-five years 
ago we" had a population of 17,000,000, the great 
West virgin soil, our forests scarcely touched, our mines 



64 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

almost wholly undeveloped, our foreign trade of no ac- 
count, few steamships, and less than 3,000 miles of rail- 
road. No equal period in all history can at all compare 
with the two generations just passed in the creation of 
wealth and the exploitation of natural resources. It has 
been an age of unparalleled advance in man's ability to 
control and direct the forces of nature, the age of steam 
and electricity. "The United States has to-day within 
its borders," says an eminent economist (President James), 
" an effective power in the engines at work, far surpassing 
the total possible power of the entire population of the 
world a century ago. In many lines of work one man, 
with the aid of a small machine, may do as much as fifty 
or a hundred men could have done at the beginning of the 
century. While in other departments, owing to the de- 
velopment of the application of steam and electricity, one 
man may do what all the population of the world combined 
could not have accomplished a hundred years ago." 

The spirit of pioneering. — The achievements of the 
last century, particularly those of the last score of years, 
are of such stupendous magnitude and so revolutionary 
in character as to fix a gulf between the life of to-day and 
that which our ancestors led when they began the conquest 
of this new world. The man who braved the dangers of 
the deep, for weeks together, in a sailing vessel, tossed 
about on an uncharted ocean and landed upon an in- 
hospitable shore, had faith and fortitude and courage 
unknown to those of us to-day who think of a sea voyage 
as a pleasant relaxation from every-day toil. The prayer 
for the person going to sea is no longer suffused with the 
emotions which once characterized that formal appeal 



OPPORTUNITIES OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 65 

to the "Eternal God who alone spreadest out the heavens 
and stillest the raging of the sea to guard the loved one 
from all danger, from sickness, from the violence of enemies 
and from every evil to which he may be exposed and to 
conduct him in safety to the haven where he would be." 

The pioneer who set out alone to explore unknown 
wilds, or with wife and children turned his face to the 
setting sun to found a new home beyond the mountains, 
or on the plains, or across the great desert, was made of 
sterner stuff than his descendant who complains of the 
luxuries of the palace car and chafes under the restraint 
of a few minutes delay in making schedule time across the 
continent. The man whose success calls for individual 
initiative, whose subsistence is gained by the work of his 
own hands, whose life depends upon a quick eye and a 
sure aim, such a man is somehow radically different from 
the men of to-day. He belongs to a by-gone age, to the 
days of homespun and log cabin and flintlock — the 
days of the simple life, the hardest kind of living. 

The willingness to take a chance. — It is little wonder 
that the typical American has learned to take chances, 
that the gambler's instinct within him amounts almost to a 
passion, that on the thing he wants he wiU stake his last 
dollar, even life itself. Without this passion to win out 
or die in the attempt, a direct inheritance with our Anglo- 
Saxon blood, this country could not have been developed 
as it has. Without it we should doubtless be playing the 
r6le of a South American republic, or be like Africa, a 
bone to be snarled over by European dogs of war. As 
a people we have taken the chance that was offered to us 
a century ago and we have played the game, most of the 

TREND IN ED. — .S 



66 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

time with a lone hand. It has been a desperate sort of 
training, this game with fate and fortune, but it has 
developed a type of civilization such as the world has 
never before seen. It has raised up men who have dared 
to harness the steeds of the Sun and drive them abreast 
across our heavens from the Massachusetts Bay to the 
Golden Gate, men who have burrowed into the earth 
and brought forth light and heat and power that defy 
the limitations of time and space, men who have organized 
and directed commercial enterprises productive of wealth 
beyond the wildest dream of oriental potentate or of the 
avarice of imperial Rome. 

The land of opportunity. — In the olden time men saw 
eye to eye, they stood shoulder to shoulder, and they 
fought hand to hand. Individual initiative, personal 
prowess, reckless daring, and persistent effort were the 
vital factors in securing success. These qualities are still 
important, indeed they are absolutely indispensable, 
but in the future that awaits the young American of to- 
day, it is a different kind of initiative and another type of 
prowess that is needed. The extraordinary increase 
of man's power over the forces of nature witnessed in the 
lifetime of those of us who are not yet willing to be called 
even middle-aged, has revolutionized communication and 
bids fair to put transportation by steam out of business. 
Who knows but the next generation may see new methods 
of transportation as far superior to the steamship and 
railroad as the telephone and telegraph are superior to 
the post rider and letter carrier? Who will search out 
these undiscovered forces and who will direct their use in 
ways beneficial to mankind? Who, indeed, if not the 



OPPORTUNITIES OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 67 

young men, who are going forth strong to battle and con- 
fident of victory? If it be true that the life of to-day is 
far removed from the Hfe of yesterday, it is equally true 
that the man of to-day far surpasses the man of yesterday, 
surpasses him, I mean, in ability to do simply because 
he has more power, infinitely more power in many ways, 
with which to do the work of the world. The youth of 
to-day have the hand, the eye, and the strong right arm 
that their great-grandfathers had, and I doubt not could, if 
necessary, acquire something of their skill and cunning; 
they have inherited their zeal and indomitable courage 
and, if need were to arise, would demonstrate it again as 
their fathers did before them; they are, or may be, all that 
the men of the past have been, but they are more — in- 
finitely more — than their forefathers ever were simply 
because the intervening years have added untold wealth 
to the patrimony of every person who enters this new 
century. They are " the heir of all the ages, in the fore- 
most files of time " and may be the possessors of the best 
the world can give. The fact that some will seize this 
birthright and lead the way to new conquests and enjoy 
new triumphs discloses the meaning of civilization. If 
human genius has increased the working efficiency of Ger- 
many ten- or fifteenfold in two generations, what may not 
be expected in young America in the next half century? 
" Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay," 
sang the English poet eighty years ago. I say to you 
better fifty years of America than anything that the 
world has to offer. America still is the land of oppor- 
tunity for us as it was for our fathers when they spied it 
out and took possession. 



68 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Popular history records an age of stone, succeeded by 
ages of bronze and iron and gold. But the age in which 
we live will surely go down in history as the age of power 
and wealth. It is an age in which man has counted less 
as a mere laborer and more as a human being than in any 
past time. Increased power means increased wealth, 
and wealth makes leisure possible. The widespread use of 
machinery on the farm, for example, makes it possible 
for the farmer to gain subsistence with less expenditure 
of time and labor than in the days of hand power; or if he 
works diligently and intelligently he may accumulate 
wealth in a manner not usually gained by tillers of the soil. 

Science and natural resources. — The markets of the 
world are controlled by those who can best use the forces 
of nature. Danish farmers, I venture to say, are no 
stronger, no more diligent, no more anxious to succeed than 
are New York or Georgia farmers, and Danish farms are 
naturally no more productive than the farms of New York, 
and far less fertile than the best of the South or of the 
central West. But Denmark has been making good use 
of trained leaders. When, some forty years ago, she saw 
depression settling down on her agriculture hke a mist, 
she set about finding the means of dispelling it. She sent 
envoys to the London markets to find out what was 
wanted; she estabhshed Agricultural Colleges to find out 
new methods of farming; she founded scores of Agricultural 
Schools accessible to all farmers' boys and girls; she sent 
out trained inspectors to advise and counsel with farmers 
on ways and means of improving their output; she set up 
testing stations where anyone might ascertain the quality 
of his goods; she organized cooperative agencies for 



OPPORTUNITIES OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 69 

distributing and marketing her products. The result is 
apparent: Denmark has gained precisely that which New 
York and every other state in this Union lacks and some 
day must have — leadership in fields to which modern 
science is applicable. 

The age of democracy. — I have said that this is an age 
of power and of wealth; I should add to this the further 
characterization that it is par excellence the age of democ- 
racy. The use of machinery driven by steam and electrical 
power has made possible great accumulation of wealth 
and has put the intelhgent workman in possession of 
forces that are productive far beyond the productivity 
of any simple pair of hands. It has made leisure possible, 
as I have said, to a degree unknown in any previous age. 
A man is rnore a man to-day than ever before. The 
power that he can wield is greater, and the leisure that he 
can find after earning his daily bread is so much greater 
than ever before that we are confronted with problems 
and situations never before met with in social life. Power 
of itself is not dangerous and wealth is not dangerous, 
but a democracy pledged to grant to each individual the 
greatest possible freedom supplied with wealth untold 
and capable of wielding irresistible power, may become 
either the greatest curse or the most signal blessing ever 
bestowed upon human society. No great nation that I 
know of has ever undertaken to grant a square deal to 
every man; no one has ever attempted to make every 
person fairly intelligent and capable of using his powers 
in any way that seems to him most fit; no nation has ever 
pinned its faith so imphcitly to the good that is in the 
common man; no nation expects so much of self-sacrifice 



70 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

and unselfish devotion from its leaders in public and private 
life. The American Republic is still on trial; it remains 
to be seen whether a " nation, conceived in liberty,- and 
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
equal . . . can long endure." 

Education a necessity. — The world offers no such 
opportunity elsewhere as lies just ahead of the young 
American who shares Nature's secrets and knows how to 
use the forces that Nature supplies. The leadership of 
the olden time may have been dependent upon the accident 
of birth, but the leadership of the time that lies just ahead 
is a matter of professional training. One may grow up 
naturally to be a leader of men on the field, or in the 
forum; it is conceivable that great statesmen or business 
men may yet be graduated merely from the " school of 
life"; but the day has passed when the great engineer is 
self-taught, or when the intending physician comes up 
from cleaning the old doctor's buggy to the mixing of 
pills and practicing on country folk, or when the law 
student attaches himself as office-boy and copyist to some 
law office. The standard set to-day for the engineer, the 
physician, and the lawyer will be required to-morrow or 
the day after of the preacher, the teacher, the farmer, the 
statesman, the business man. Simple operations, even 
those of a professional character, may be learned by obser- 
vation and perfected by practice, but few of nature's 
forces are simple when followed up. It requires no ex- 
traordinary intelligence, for example, to convert corn into 
pork — any fairly healthy hog will do that if you give 
him a chance — but it requires the patient research of 
the professional chemist, the skill of the engineer and the 



OPPORTUNITIES OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 7 1 

practical capacity of the great business man to convert 
corn into the hundred and more different kinds of products 
now on our markets, ranging from Vermont maple syrup 
to guncotton and from glucose to pyroxylyn varnishes 
and battleship armor. 

Advancement of medical science. — Time was when 
smallpox, diphtheria, tuberculosis, cholera, and yellow 
fever were regarded as dispensations of Divine Providence, 
scourges of an angry God which might well terrify even 
the most stout-hearted; to-day, thanks to the advance of 
medical science, they have been shorn of their terrors and 
relegated to the list of preventable diseases. Modern 
surgery, thanks to methods of antiseptic treatment intro- 
duced by Lister and to the discovery of anaesthesia made 
by one of our own American physicians, has brought into 
this world within a generation more genuine thankfulness 
for the alleviation of pain and suffering than the human race 
since its creation has ever had cause to show. These 
conquests of medical science, and others of which no lay- 
man is competent to speak, are due, every one of them, to 
better knowledge of Nature's laws and to increasing profes- 
sional skill. And how modern it all is. The man (Doctor 
Bowditch) who organized the first laboratory for phys- 
iological research and microscopic investigation in any 
American medical school has but recently retired from 
active service in Harvard University. In 1871, when he 
began his teaching, the Harvard Medical School was 
graduating physicians after one year's hearing of lectures 
with only a little dissection in the anatomy course. Think 
of it — no laboratories, no microscopes, no bacteriology, 
no hospital service, in the foremost University medical 



72 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

school of this country — and that in the lifetime of most 
of my readers. 

Growth of professional schools. — And how was it a 
generation ago with other professional schools; such as 
Schools of Law for example? Well, the one at Columbia 
University, under Professor Dwight, was certainly not 
inferior to any other that can be named. It was then a 
proprietary institution to which almost anyone who could 
pay the fees might find admission, and while eminently 
successful it bore Httle resemblance to the carefully or- 
ganized, scholarly professional school which to-day 
admits only college graduates. The schools of engi- 
neering, I hardly need mention here. Fifty years ago 
there were only three in this country, and four-fifths of 
all we have to-day have been established in the last thirty 
years. Civil engineering then comprised practically the 
whole field; mining and mechanical engineering were in 
their infancy; electrical engineering, sanitary engineering, 
chemical engineering, and all the rest of them existed then, 
if they had any existence, only in the embryonic stage. 
As for our schools of veterinary medicine, dentistry, 
agriculture, horticulture, and the like, they are the product 
chiefly of the last quarter century. The professional 
training of elementary teachers has had a history of 
about sixty years, but I have personally had a part in 
building up the first University professional school for 
teachers in this country, or, for that matter, in the world. 

The dilemma of the public. — Professional training 
on a university plane, training that seeks to make use 
of and apply the highest scholarship in every field of 
scientific research, is very, very modern. When I look 



OPPORTUNITIES OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 73 

about me and see what has been accomplished in a few 
short years, I marvel at our attainments and take courage. 
When, on the other hand, I consider how far short we 
come of perfection, how we fail to do even that which 
we could do if only we had more time for study, greater skill 
in teaching, higher standards of admission, better equip- 
ment in library, laboratory, and shop. I feel like be- 
rating the public for its lack of confidence in professional 
ability and its want of faith in professional service. But 
these lapses are momentary. I know the world is full 
of quacks and charlatans whose sole business is to prey 
upon the ignorant and to get money falsely from those 
in need of professional service. I know, too, and I blush 
to say it, that there are those who have enjoyed the priv- 
ileges of professional training, who have been for years 
together the recipients of pubhc generosity and private 
beneficence, who have taken day after day the best that 
devoted teachers can give, but who seem to have no pro- 
fessional honor and to recognize no professional obligations. 
These are they of whom the world has a right to ask 
for bread and yet who, when asked, give instead a stone. 
The great fraternity of professional man has no greater 
burden to bear than that imposed by its own delinquent 
membership. There is no obstacle to professional success 
comparable to that set up by men professionally 
trained who lack professional instincts and professional 
honor. What wonder that the public finds it difficult 
to discriminate between the -quack and the physician, 
between the honest engineer and the knave who slights 
his job, between the teacher who educates and the 
person who merely gives instruction! The success of 



74 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

every professional leader is measured, not so much by 
his material accomplishments, by what he can get for 
himself, as by what he can do for others and the con- 
fidence he can establish in himself. Every professional 
man who fails to measure up to the highest professional 
ideals not only falls short of his own best good but posi- 
tively harms every other man who would attain the best. 
No man can be a leader in any field who does not have the 
confidence of those who should follow him; no group 
of men can lead effectively if some of them are 
unable or unwilling to stand the test of professional 
efficiency. 

The obligations of youth. — Standing as do the young 
people of America at the opening of their careers, facing 
opportunities which no one before ever enjoyed, equipped 
for service as few of their predecessors have been, they 
owe a duty to their profession and to society which de- 
mands the highest endeavor. They are what they are 
by virtue of parental devotion, social beneficence and 
professional training; the least they can do to honor 
those whose name they bear is to be true to themselves; 
the least they can do for their State is to repay its invest- 
ment in them by upholding its standards of citizenship; 
the least they can do for their profession is to defend 
its honor and to serve it with loyalty and devotion. 

The Hippocratic oath. — On every Commencement 
Day in my own university I hear the Hippocratic oath 
administered to the graduating class of our College of 
Physicians and Surgeons. It never fails to rouse in me 
the deepest emotions. When I realize that for centuries 
those entering the oldest of our learned professions have 



OPPORTUNITIES OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 75 

sworn directly or indirectly to discharge those profes- 
sional obligations which were as patent to the Greeks of 
two thousand years ago as to us of the twentieth century, I 
think I understand why it is that the good physician is 
jealous of his honor and how it comes that high and low, 
rich and poor, may appeal to the good physician in certain 
faith that to the best of his ability he will serve them all 
alike. Listen to that oath!^ 

" Candidates for the Degree of Doctor of Medicine: 

" In our profession it is a custom, established more 
than two thousand years ago, that no man may be ad- 
mitted to its honors who has not first expressly taken 
upon himself its obligations. Now, therefore, in behalf 
of your elders, I call upon you to take, as we have taken 
before you, the oath which bears the name of Hippo- 
crates. The language in which our predecessors first 
pronounced it is no longer spoken; the very gods whom 
they called to witness have been discarded; but still Vv^e 
can find no nobler words than the most ancient in which 
to hand down the traditions of our calling. 

" You do solemnly swear, each man by whatever he 
holds most sacred: 

*' That you will be loyal to the Profession of Medicine 
and just and generous to its members; 

" That you will lead your fives and practice your art 
in uprightness and honor; 

" That into whatsoever house you shall enter, it shall 
be for the good of the sick to the utmost of your power, 

1 Introduction, by J. G. Curtis, M. D., to the " Hippocratic 
Oath," spoken annually at the Commencement of Columbia Uni- 
versity. 



76 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

you holding yourselves far aloof from wrong, from cor- 
ruption, from the tempting of others to vice; 

" That you will exercise your art solely for tJie cure 
of your patients, and will give no drug, perform no opera- 
tion, for a criminal purpose, even if soHcited; far less 
suggest it; 

" That whatsoever you shall see or hear of the lives of 
men which is not fitting to be spoken, you will keep in- 
violably secret. 

" These things do you swear? Let each man bow 
the head in sign of acquiescence. 

" And now, if you shall be true to this your oath, may 
prosperity and good repute be ever yours; the opposite, 
if you shall prove yourselves forsworn." 

Other professions call for no such formal asseveration 
of intentions. But I charge the youth of America, in the 
name of those who have gone before, in the name of all 
those who have contributed to that wealth of knowledge, 
that store of custom and tradition, that accumulation of 
spiritual gifts, which are so freely theirs, in the name of all 
those who have made their opportunity greater than that 
which they themselves enjoyed, I charge them to be men, 
good men, strong men, men ready to aid the suffering, 
to succor the weak, and to uphft the faint-hearted, men 
devoted to your profession, jealous of its integrity, faith- 
ful to its trusts and anxious for its advancement, men 
capable of leadership in this new century, and worthy of 
American citizenship, the finest flower of advancing 
civiHzation. 



CHAPTER V 

THE CALL TO PROFESSIONAL SERVICE ^ 

THE choice of a profession marks a crisis in a young 
man's life. It is the end of a period of irrespon- 
sible living, of acquisition without purpose, 
and of expenditure without reward. It is the beginning 
of a period of self-direction and self-control, of struggle 
for mastery, of devotion to duty and service to others. 

The selection of a calling. — No wonder that the young 
man — when I say " young man " I mean also the young 
woman with professional aspirations — approaches this 
crisis with strangely conflicting emotions. He is uncertain 
of himself. He has no means of knowing whether he is 
physically fit and temperamentally adapted to meet the 
strains of professional life. Nothing in his personal 
experience enables him to judge of his ability to excel in a 
particular professional career; and he has only the most 
superficial views of the duties and obligations of any kind 
of professional service. But the necessity of making 
a living drives him on. He is attracted by the prizes 
that reward the successful practitioner and he longs to 
do something that will count in the estimation of his fel- 
lows. His youthful optimism buoys him up and he 
dreams of the good he may do. The choice is made 
despite the doubts which arise and which occasionally 
continue to harass until he finds himself, years afterward, 
in and through his professional work. 

■A revised reprint from the Columbia University Quarterly, December, 1908. 

77 



78 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Since many of my readers have either chosen a pro- 
fessional career or are in the way to do so, I shall discuss 
some aspects of professional service. I purposely limit 
the scope of this survey, because some things are obvious 
to all who have eyes to see what is going on about them, 
and because some things may safely be neglected in 
addressing an American audience. Therefore, I shall 
say nothing of the relative importance of the professions. 
It is obvious that any profession has its advantages and 
disadvantages — for some who contemplate its exactions ; 
and that all are in need of the uplift that comes through 
strong and capable men. We may safely neglect, too, 
the pecuniary rewards of professional service, for who is 
not aware that the laborer is worthy of his hire and that 
in every profession the assiduous devotee is assured of a 
decent Hving? There is opportunity, abundant oppor- 
tunity, in every field, and no one need turn aside from any 
preferred course for fear that it will not yield the neces- 
saries of life or give free scope to honest effort. 

Professional service. — I use the term profession in 
a liberal sense, as any vocation in which specialized 
knowledge is rationally, ethically, and skillfully applied 
in practical affairs. In this sense we recognize profes- 
sions of engineering, teaching, agriculture, architecture, 
banking, military affairs, and the like, as well as the 
traditional professions of theology, law, and medicine. 
With increasing knowledge, higher ethical standards, 
and more rational practice we shall some day have pro- 
fessions of merchandising, journalism, housekeeping, 
nursing, pharmacy, dentistry — possibly even a pro- 
fession of politics. Some occupations are debarred from 



THE CALL TO PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 79 

the professional class because of lack of scientific attain- 
ments, others by want of an ethical code, and a few by 
reason of insufficient technical skill. Conversely, any 
profession may be debased by practitioners who profess 
what they do not know, or cannot do, or who fail to 
recognize the moral obligations of their position. Pro- 
fessional service implies the possession of knowledge and 
power restricted to the few, but denied to the many. It 
implies leadership and bespeaks leaders who are worthy 
of the trust that the many should place in them. 

The function of the university. — The relation of the 
university to the professions is clearly apparent. The 
function of such an institution as this, indeed its sole 
function, is the training of leaders. First, in its quest 
for new knowledge in every field and in its provision for 
giving instruction in what is known, the university dis- 
charges its foremost duty to the professions that it rep- 
resents; second, by formal teaching and through the 
influence of its social life the university promotes those 
ideals of social conduct which obtain between man and 
man ; finally, in its professional schools, the university seeks 
to organize knowledge for professional ends and to give 
training in acceptable methods of procedure. 

The obligations of service. — The man who chooses a 
profession deliberately purposes to become a leader of 
men. He takes advantage of opportunities for study 
and training which few can enjoy. He equips himself 
for work in which he has few equals and may have no 
superior. He professes to be able to do what the many 
wish to have done but cannot do for themselves, and he 
invites the confidence and support of those who lack his 



8o THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

ability. The professional man, therefore, voluntarily 
assumes obligations which can be adequately met only 
by the most conscientious preparation maintained 
throughout a lifetime of devoted service. 

The value of a liberal education. — We must distinguish 
between the preparation necessary to enter upon a pro- 
fessional career and the equipment essential to the highest 
success in a particular profession. Time was when most 
of what was needed could be acquired in professional 
practice. The apprentice system did enable the beginner 
to assimilate the accumulated experience of his masters 
and to acquaint himself with the ethical standards of 
his colleagues. When knowledge was limited, experience 
counted for much, and the graduated steps in the ad- 
vancement of the novice gave him that understanding 
of human nature without which no one may aspire to 
be a leader of men. To-day there is much to learn before 
professional work can be begun. Every decade sees 
scholastic requirements advanced and insisted upon. 
The maximum of to-day is the minimum of to-morrow, 
just because we are adding daily to the knowledge that 
honest professional men must use in their practice. The 
only question of an academic nature that can be raised is 
where to draw the line between what is essentially prepara- 
tory and what can safely be left to later acquisition. 
There is no limit to what the professional man needs 
short of the furthermost bounds of scientific knowledge 
applicable to his professional work. Indeed, he must go 
further than merely professional needs. He who would 
be a leader of men in any profession must see his work 
in its relation to the work of other men, see it as a part 



THE CALL TO PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 5 1 

of a greater whole in which all things work together har- 
moniously in the upbuilding of a higher life. This, I 
take it, is the justification of a liberal education prepar- 
atory to the professional course. It appeals to me as a 
higher motive than that of personal gratification or gen- 
eral culture. It means knowledge of use, directly or 
indirectly, in promoting a better civilization. 

The opportunity of the student. — The student who 
begins his professional course in a modern university 
finds it a storehouse of knowledge. A part of what is 
taught may be unscientific and much of it may be poorly 
organized and inadequately presented, but these are the 
problems of scholarly research and university adminis- 
tration. No student in our university classes need 
languish for lack of intellectual stimulant or hunger 
for substantial mental pabulum. The honest student 
may discover our defects, but he will have no time for 
faultfinding. He will be too far on the road to discovery 
to share his secrets with the uninitiated. The most serious 
obstacle to the advancement of the professional student 
is the presence in our classes of those unable or unwilling 
to keep the pace. An inscrutable Providence, it may be 
assumed, inspires to professional study even those who 
are least capable, but why they should be inflicted is a 
mystery understood only by those who know why you 
get measles and mumps and second teeth. You may 
endure stoically the blunderings of your incapable asso- 
ciates, they will always be with you, but you have a right 
to resent the interference of those who are able to keep 
step but refuse to do it. It is a curious commentary 
on student life that those who deliberately seek to retard 

TREND IN ED. — 6 



82 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

the advancement of a class by " bluffing " ihe instructor 
or absorbing an undue proportion of his attention, 
should ever be tolerated by honest students. It is per- 
haps still more remarkable that those who intentionally 
and persistently shirk class duties deceive themselves 
in thinking that it is of little consequence. 

Why such self-deception? Who has not sized up every 
classmate from the primary school on? One knows 
every shirk and every trickster with whom one has been 
associated. In the ordinary course of events the asso- 
ciates of these defaulters in years to come will know 
them as their associates do now. Talent and brilliancy 
cannot redeem such reputations. Some day when you 
wish to retain a lawyer in an important case you will 
not turn to the man, however brilliant or talented, who 
tricked you in class. You will never entrust your life, 
or the Hfe of anyone you are responsible for, to the care 
of that physician who undervalued scientific facts and 
jumped at conclusions in the classroom. You will place 
no confidence in the business man who as fellow student 
could not be depended on to do the fair thing. When 
the crucial time comes you will search out the man who 
knows how to do honest work, and you will prefer him 
for his straightforwardness rather than for any other 
qualification. Your way in such cases is the way of the 
world. It is the penalty — silent, unobstrusive, but no 
less effective, — that society inflicts on those who shirk 
its responsibiHties. No further explanation is needed 
of the failure of some men to attain commanding success. 

The need for socialization. — He who would be a 
leader in professional life should understand human 



THE CALL TO PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 83 

nature. He needs an intimate knowledge of his fellow 
men, quick insight into human passions and prejudices 
and a sympathetic understanding of man's ambitions and 
aspirations. He must be willing to bide his time and know 
how to act when the right time comes. In all his dealings 
he must exercise tact and common sense. In a word, 
he must know how to get on with his fellows. 

There is no factor in professional equipment so diffi- 
cult of acquisition as this personal one. We take it for 
granted, other things equal, that the man who has it will 
succeed and that without it failure is almost certain. 
Strange that in our training courses we take no account 
of it. We seem to forget that while we are born with 
social instincts, we learn by experience the traditions of 
social life and acquire painfully the habits and customs 
of those among whom we live. A man learns how to get 
on with his fellows and how to lead them just as he learns 
everything else worth doing. A Robinson Crusoe exist- 
ence is no preparation for social living. 

The ethical import of professional service requires that 
the professional man maintain a healthy interest in his 
fellows. He may not divorce himself from those whom 
he serves or from his professional colleagues. He should 
not live to himself alone, least of all during those years 
of preparatory training when habits are being fixed and 
customs established for all one's later life. This, I take 
it, is the justification of all our so-called college-life, our 
clubs and fraternities, newspapers and periodicals, debates 
and athletic sports. We need them — the more the 
better, provided they are well conducted and kept within 
their proper sphere. 



84 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

The value of college athletics. — Much has been said 
of late concerning American college sports. It is pointed 
out that relatively few engage in them, that they are 
unduly expensive, that they absorb too much time and 
are attended by serious abuses, and that instead of manly 
sports they have become games in which the determina- 
tion to win outweighs all other considerations. It is a 
pity that such charges can be brought against a legitimate 
activity of student life and a greater pity that our students 
do not themselves make such criticism impossible. 
Despite all criticism, however, college sports and athletics 
are here to stay until something better is found. They 
afford healthful pastime for many who take only unim- 
portant parts. There is variety enough to hold the 
interest of all who can be induced to cooperate with their 
fellows. Note the list: walking, running, jumping, hurd- 
Hng, vaulting, throwing, wrestling, fencing, boxing, tennis, 
rowing, lacrosse, baseball, basket ball, and football. Yes, 
even football, the most maligned of all, is worth playing, 
provided it can be a clean sport. I have no fear of serious 
harm from a few bruises and sprains and broken bones. 
All these will mend. They are the price youth pays for 
good health and animal spirits; they are part of the cost 
of learning how to get on with one's fellows, how to lead 
and be led in the practical affairs of life. The curse of it 
aU is its taint of professionalism, a misnomer, by the 
way, because true professionalism, as I have tried to show, 
is guided by the highest ethical motives. The fault 
lies in exaggerating the element of contest and in making 
the determination to win paramount to all other con- 
siderations. It is the same kind of mistake that some 



THE CALL TO PROFESSIONAL SERVICE ^5 

college students and some college professors make when 
they consider the acquisition of knowledge, however 
valuable, an end in itself. A more wholesome view, in 
my opinion, is that both college studies and college sports 
are means to ends, the chief purpose of which is not the 
winning of the game. 

College fellowship. — The social life of our American 
colleges is rich in educational possibilities. I would 
not limit the activity of any decent club, or society, or 
association of students in which men get acquainted 
with one another, learn one another's strength and weak- 
ness, and become familiar with the ways of thinking and 
acting that prevail in student hfe. Here they learn to 
give and take. Under the stress of such social inter- 
course the youth restrains his personal whims, modifies 
his family prejudices and becomes one of a social group, 
a group which ought to be typical of the best the world 
has to ofifer. If our college life falls short of this high 
ideal it is due to the frailties of human nature and the 
inexperience of college students. 

There never was a time when college life was cleaner, 
freer from immoralities and youthful excesses, than it is 
to-day. The typical college student is honest of purpose, 
fair in his dealings, upright in his life, and enthusiastic 
in his interests.' The college community is far safer 
than city streets or country villages. Some there are 
in every community who transgress the limits of pro- 
priety. We know the college student who thinks it smart 
to have his fling, and we hear the excuse that one must 
know the seamy side of life in order to cope with it. But 
the honest student is fully aware of the fallacy. He knows 



86 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

that in order to cope with snakes he doesn't need to crawl 
on his belly. The man who debases himself can offer 
no excuse for it save that of selfish gratification. 

University ideals. — If university studies afford the 
substantial materials out of which the professional man 
carves his career, it is equally true that his college life 
is the medium in which he develops his standards of 
personal worth. The professional school seeks to organ- 
ize the scientific knowledge within a particular field and 
to adapt it to practical ends. The way in which this 
is done, the character of the instruction, the spirit of the 
instructors and the tone of the place determine in a large 
measure the ethical as well as the scientific status of the 
school. Careful, exact, conscientious workers are not 
trained by teachers who are indifferent to scientific accuracy 
in the classroom and unresponsive to the claims of the 
profession they represent. On the other hand, we ap- 
preciate the inspiring uplift of the great teacher — the 
man who through devotion to his subject leads his students 
to a clearer vision of the truth as he sees it and rouses 
within them the ambition to give equally noble service. 
But however great the skill and inspiring the presence 
of teachers in a professional school, they cannot supply 
all the training that a professional school should give; 
they cannot give that which students should give to 
each other. Just as college life furnishes the means 
of quickening the social and civic conscience of college 
students, so, the professional school needs a life of its own 
for the promotion of professional ethics and the develop- 
ment of professional morals. The student of law should 
enter upon his life work not only famihar with legal facts 



THE CALL TO PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 87 

and procedure but also helped by his fellows to appreciate 
his position as the peacemaker of society. The teacher 
should go out not merely grounded in the subjects he will 
teach and skilled in giving instruction, but also eager to 
serve society in the way that he knows others of his fellows 
can and will serve it. The engineer who makes rail- 
roads, builds bridges, devises and operates machines, 
constructs canals and aqueducts, and directs great indus- 
trial plants should somehow come to realize that his 
chief end is not the making or saving of money for himself, 
or for anyone else, but that he is a responsible factor in the 
present industrial order for the betterment of social 
conditions. Is he likely to get that notion in his active 
career, urged on, as he is sure to be, by business com- 
petition and the thirst for gain? Will the solemn promise 
of the medical graduate to observe the vows of the Hippo- 
cratic oath be of much avail if during the years of his 
preparation the full import of that historic formula is 
not borne in upon him by all the force of example in his 
daily intercourse with teacher and fellow student? 

Ethics of the profession. — Great as is the need of 
scientific attainment in every profession, there is even 
greater need of moral responsibility. We want lawyers, 
physicians, teachers, engineers, business men, who not 
only know how to do things but who will also insist on 
doing them right — men who, conscious of their abihty 
as leaders, are Jealous of their professional honor — men 
who will readily sacrifice personal gain to uphold the 
dictates of conscience in their professional service. The 
professional school is the place above all others where 
such ideals can be impressed upon young men. There 



88 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

is no time in life when men are so susceptible to generous 
impulse and no place where so many can be influenced 
at once. But, as I have already said, it is not the work 
of teachers and faculty alone; it is preeminently the 
result of the interaction and interrelation of students 
engrossed in a common undertaking and stirred by a 
common ambition to make their lives count for most. 
The duty of the student is to join hands with teachers 
and fellow students in making these years of professional 
study also years of growth into professional stature. 
The Hfe outside of class can be so ordered as to reinforce 
and supplement the instruction received. It is serious 
work to which the student puts his hand and he will be 
held strictly responsible both by his own conscience and 
by the judgment of his fellow men for the way he per- 
forms this task. 

The inspiration of professional service. — The call to 
professional service comes to young men in the form of 
imperious command. If it were the call to arms in the 
defense of country they would respond by tens and hun- 
dreds, and not one would falter whithersoever duty led. 
This call to service which I voice comes from fellow country- 
men who are engaged in that everlasting war with sin 
and ignorance and greed and selfisli ambition. They 
call on us to equip ourselves for leadership and they con- 
fidently expect us to stand forth when the time comes, 
fully prepared to merit the confidence they would place 
in us. They have put at our command all the resources 
of the universities which bring to us the wisdom of the 
ages and line us up with the great men who have preceded 
us. It is an inspiring company of leaders in statecraft, 



THE CALL TO PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 89 

theology, law, medicine, business, engineering, and in 
all arts and sciences of every field. No one of those 
whom we to-day call great, no one whose life we would 
set up as a measure of our own, has failed to respond to 
that appeal in the cause of righteousness which comes to 
aU in the call to professional service. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE ^ 

THE American school is under fire — it is always 
under fire. Just now it is said that its cur- 
riculum is overloaded with fads and frills which 
burden the child and hamper his training in subjects 
essential to his success in life. Pubhc opinion is critical 
of a system which makes easy the advancement of a few 
to positions of commanding influence, but which provides 
no vocational training for the many who cannot afford 
to remain in school beyond the elementary grades. The 
demand is for equahty of opportunity in education without 
regard to social rank or wealth or any special privilege, 
that kind of equahty which enables one to become a good 
American citizen, and which, as I understand it, is estab- 
lished on the abiUty to earn a decent livelihood and the 
determination to make one's life worth the living. 

The motor element in learning. — The instruction 
given in our public schools is chiefly of two kinds: (i) 
humanistic, including language and hterature, history 
and civics, and the fine arts; and (2) scientific, including 
mathematics, geography, physics, chemistry, and biology. 
Our schools also provide for training in the practical 
arts which are required in the study of these subjects, 
preeminently the arts of reading, writing, singing, and 
drawing. Of late years the attention given to hygiene 

1 A revised reprint from the Educational Review, December, 1909, used by courtesy 
of the publishers. 

90 



THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE 9 1 

has begotten systematic training in gymnastics and 
athletic games. Our school work, however, is bookish, 
a term of reproach with some, but properly understood 
it stands above criticism. That which is worth knowing 
about human progress is for the most part contained in 
books. The scientific studies, as well as the humanistic, 
have been recorded in books; indeed, it would hardly 
be creditable to our civihzation if the achievements of 
one generation were not made available for the genera- 
tions that follow after. And what form is more endur- 
ing, what form more available, than the writing which 
may be read by all who are willing to master the con- 
ventional arts confirmed by use and tradition? If our 
schools are culpably bookish, it is because our teachers 
misuse the book and confound methods of teaching with 
the acquisition of knowledge. Given something to learn, 
whether contained in a book or not, it is the teacher's 
business to see that the learner approaches his task in 
such a way as to make his progress certain and the re- 
sults secure. If motor expression will help ease the way 
or better define the end, the good teacher will surely 
use it. And one should know that reading, writing, 
and singing are as truly means of motor expression as 
drawing or dancing or handiwork. In so far, therefore, 
as the aim of learning is to acquire knowledge, there is 
no good reason for spending an hour in manipulation 
when the fact may be as well taught without it in a 
minute. On the other hand, the fact which calls for motor 
expression and the process which demands technical 
skill, may never be acquired in their completeness with- 
out persistent drill. But drill for the sake of technical 



92 THE tRE>fD IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

skill is one thing; motor expression for the sake of clari- 
fying, strengthening, and assimilating knowledge is an- 
other thing. To learn by doing is well enough, if there 
is no better way; to do, without learning from it, is to 
drop to the level of the brute, a travesty on pedagogical 
insight. 

Manual training in school curricula. — The significance 
of motor expression in the learning process came to con- 
scious aess in our schools only a generation ago; indeed, 
we are only now becoming alive to its place and possi- 
bilities. Some got the notion at first that there was a 
magical charm in the training of hand and eye. Manual 
training was heralded as the remedy for all defects of 
vision, mental and physical, and the claim was made that 
in whittling paper-knives out of wood the boy was really 
shaping his own character. To follow exactly the speci- 
fications of a blue-print drawing was thought to be the 
surest way of bringing home the lessons of honesty, sobriety, 
and truthfulness. Until within ten years, manual train- 
ing was defended by its over-zealous advocates on the 
grounds of its value as a mental and moral discipline. 
It is difficult for us to see, even after the lapse of so few 
years, why such great worth was imputed to manual 
dexterity and so Httle value attached to good reading 
or legible writing or correct translation. 

It is past our comprehension, even now, how anyone 
could have supposed that mere doing could rank in educa- 
tional value with the doing of something worth while. 
The fact is, of course, that no one really thought, regardless 
of what may have been said, that making nothing and 
making something were one and the same. The early 



THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LEFE 93 

projects in manual training may seem to us trivial, but 
their value is not to be reckoned in terms of accomplish- 
ment, but rather in terms of effort. They represent an 
effort to secure at any cost the motor expression demanded 
by child nature. If the teacher of the humanities and the 
sciences would not employ it intelligently, here was a 
group of enthusiasts who would use it anyway, unintel- 
ligently, if necessary. PubHc opinion, not always a safe 
pedagogical guide, supported them, and the result is a place 
in the curriculum for a subject which few know how to 
teach and which perhaps no one should teach in the way at 
first proposed. 

In supporting the demand for manual training in the 
industrial and household arts, public opinion outran the 
educational theorists. Fathers and mothers care relatively 
little for formal disciphne of any kind. They want tan- 
gible results. They want their children to be able to 
read, write, and reckon. Some go so far as to ask for 
an appreciation of good literature and the fine arts, and a 
working knowledge of history, civics, and the sciences, 
but such are always in the minority. The one thing 
that every parent wants, the one thing that gives him 
most anxious thought, is how best to make his child 
self-supporting. In manual training he sees a chance to 
develop that skill of hand required by the craftsman; 
in the technical processes he discovers a hkeness to the 
processes with which he is acquainted in the home or 
in the industrial world. The study promises material 
reward and he seizes the chance to turn it to account in 
the vocational training of his child. 

The development of applied design. — Manual train- 



94 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

ing in some form is here to stay. The teacher needs it in 
teaching not one subject, but most subjects; the public 
demands it because it offers the most obvious means of 
beginning the training for vocational life. Under the 
combined influence of pedagogical needs and public 
demands, the content of our manual training courses 
has been radically changed within the past decade. In 
the effort to give free expression to the child, all manner 
of projects have been carried out through handwork. 
Woolly sheep have sported with polar bears under fir 
trees set in a desert of sand. Bookbinding and block 
houses, Indian war bonnets and water wheels, inkwells 
and Navajo blankets, bent iron jimcracks and raffia 
baskets, book shelves and dolls' clothes, broom holders 
and picture frames — all these and a thousand more 
mixed up in indescribable confusion! Is it any wonder 
that someone should raise the cry of fads and frills? The 
wonder is that anyone should try to justify such work in 
school on any ground other than mere recreation. Absurd 
as it may seem when one reads over a list of manual proj- 
ects actually put before our children in school, there has 
been consistent progress along two lines: (i) in the usable- 
ness of the completed article, and (2) in the design and 
artistic finish given to it. The difficulty of children's 
making really usable things contrasted with the ease 
of executing artistic design has largely changed the char- 
acter of manual training within the past ten years. In 
fact, manual training to-day is httle more than applied 
design. In this respect it is quite worth while. It is the 
best thing that has come into our schools in recent years, 
and we cannot afford to lose it. 



THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE 95 

Manual training as applied design is a subject quite 
different from the sloyd and formal projects of twenty 
years ago. If manual discipline is no longer wanted for 
itself, one may ask why the term manual training should 
be retained. Why not combine with drawing and call it 
all " art " or " applied design? " Another question — Why 
should we have distinct courses in the household arts in 
the lower grades of the elementary schools? The work 
done in these lines is either applied design or training in 
the technic of housewifery. This consideration raises 
another question: What is the place of vocational training 
in the elementary school? 

School levels and specialization. — One characteristic 
of the American school system is apparently fixed. The 
work of the first six years of ihe elementary school is 
fundamental, the same for all regardless of sex or future 
occupation. Six years of schooling is the usual legal 
requirement, and there is a consensus of opinion that 
specialization should not begin before the twelfth or 
thirteenth year of age. Some would defer it two years or 
more, but the number of children leaving school at or 
before the end of the sixth grade warrants the attempt 
to make the work of the first six years of the elementary 
course complete in itself, and as comprehensive as pos- 
sible. Such a course should be cultural in the best sense, 
a course calculated to put the child in possession of his 
inheritance as a human being and fit him to enter upon 
whatever work may be expected of him in the years im- 
mediately following. With six years of good funda- 
mental training, the child is ready at thirteen or fourteen 
to look forward to his life work. The physiological age 



96 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

suggests differentiation for the sexes. For those who go 
to college, it is time to begin specialization along academic 
lines; for those who are to become artizans or farmers, 
or tradesmen, as soon as possible, it is time to begin voca- 
tional training. Specialization at the age of twelve to 
fourteen years should begin gradually, and in the voca- 
tional Hnes it should be essentially preparatory to the 
later years of trade school or apprentice training. My 
point is that when the boy or girl hears the call of voca- 
tional life, specialization should begin and gradually narrow 
into technical training for specific occupations — for some 
at the age of twenty-five in professions; for others at the 
age of sixteen in the trades. Between these extremes 
will be found most vocations in which men and women 
engage. A fundamental course of six years, at once 
cultural and preparatory to the widest possible range of 
differentiated courses beginning with the seventh grade, 
is the chief desideratum of our American school system. 

Study of economics for perspective. — The present 
curriculum of our public schools, as I have already shown, 
is chiefly composed of humanistic and scientific subjects. 
We have made an attempt to introduce certain industrial 
and household arts, but they are so lacking in coherency 
as to raise serious doubts of their value as fundamental 
subjects. Nevertheless, there is another subject of in- 
struction as fundamental as any now contained in the 
curriculum. If the humanistic studies are essential 
in the training of the child in his social relations, and the 
scientific in his relations to the physical world in which 
he lives, it is equally important that economic studies 
be included in the curriculum to provide instruction 



THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE 97 

in the industries from which man gains his material 
possessions. 

Of course, I do not mean to include economic studies 
in the elementary school for the sake of technical training 
in any industry any more than I advocate the study of 
poetry in the grades for the training of the poet, or design 
for the artist, or biology for the physician. I mean the 
study of industries for the sake of a better perspective 
on man's achievements in controlhng the prdtiuction, 
distribution, and consumption of the things which con- 
stitute his material wealth. For these he labors for 
life; on the use he makes of them depend much of his own 
happiness and the well-being of his fellows. It is only 
by means of such st^udies, whether pursued systematically 
in schools or picked up under the adverse conditions of after 
life, that we acquire the basis of judgment concerning 
the acts and aspirations of our fellow men, either those 
who provide the capital for exploiting natural resources 
or those who do the work required in the several indus- 
trial pursuits. In our political life, no knowledge is of 
more consequence than that which is concerned with the 
relations of capital and labor; for us, as a people, there is 
nothing more to be desired than a sympathetic under- 
standing of the conditions under which men earn their 
living. Is a liberal education possible in this age without 
a knowledge of these things which more than all others 
make men free or leave them slaves? 

Defining life-aims. — A threefold division of the cur- 
riculum — humanistic, scientific, industrial — has the ad- 
vantage over the present twofold division not only in 
providing a more liberal education, but also in affording a 

TREND IN ED. — 7 



98 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

better preparation for the differentiated courses which 
begin in the grammar school. The training now given 
in language and literature, and in the arts and sciences 
of the elementary school, is of prime importance as a 
preparation for any course that a child may pursue later 
on; in some respects, no other training can approach it in 
practical worth even for the work of the lowest grade 
of trade school. Nevertheless, it is an assured fact that 
our boys and girls do not enter industrial life with the 
same confidence that they exhibit in other fields for which 
their academic training has fitted them. They see no 
fascination in industrial activity and they have no basis 
of judgment for choosing any particular career. The 
fault is largely due to avoidance of industrial instruction 
in the schools, as something degrading if not positively 
unclean, and the setting up in its place of unattainable 
ideals at variance with the actual conditions of society. 
I would not check the ambition of any American child, 
however high his goal — it is his birthright as an American 
citizen — but I would have the school help him define 
the aim of his life in terms of his own natural endowment 
and possible attainment. The child has a right to this 
kind of guidance; the school must give it, and what the 
school gives must be determined by sympathetic instruc- 
tion along the lines leading to the goal. 

Revision of present practices. — The public, in giving 
support to manual training and the household arts, un- 
doubtedly intends these subjects to promote closer rela- 
tionship between the school and vocational life; some 
teachers of these subjects unquestionably do use them 
with precisely this intent; but efficient instruction pre- 



THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LITE 99 

supposes something definite to teach and a consistent 
way of teaching it. Subtract from our present manual- 
training course that which is essentially apphed design 
and those exercises which are intended to afford motor 
expression in the learning of other subjects in the cur- 
riculum, and what is left is an incoherent, unorganized 
series of projects without purposes or educational value. 
However good the artistic treatment, and however desir- 
able the assistance gi\^en in acquiring knowledge of other 
subjects, the results now obtained contrast most un- 
favorably with what might be secured from a series of 
projects harmoniously organized to attain a specific end 
and at the same time incidentally to provide for the nec- 
essary motor expression and all needful application of 
artistic design. In other words, motor expression and 
art training may as well be secured as by-products in doing 
something worth while as by making them ends in them- 
selves. Whatever value may attach to the subject 
matter in such procedure is clear gain. The plan I pro- 
pose, therefore, is intended to retain all that is of real 
worth in manual training and at the same time to get 
something still more to be desired. It is precisely the 
plan long followed by good teachers of reading and writing. 
The child in his reading may as well read the best of lit- 
erature as the poorest, and in writing learn how to ex- 
press himself clearly, concisely, and in good form as to 
follow everlastingly a copy-plate. 

It may be interjected at this point that some teachers 
of manual training have used the subject as a means of 
introducing the child to the complexities of social life, 
that it has been a means of socializing him, that it has 



lOO THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

given him a chance to find himself in the midst of a highly 
artificial and conventional environment. If this be true, 
and the aim is certainly not an unworthy one, the end 
may as well be attained by putting the activities proposed 
on the high plane of real life. 

Social needs and subject matter. — The problem, then, 
is to organize the information within the industrial field 
in such a way as to make it valuable, first, in the edu- 
cation of the masses and, second, in technical training 
for specific vocations. There is no lack of information; 
what is knowable in any industry is beyond the reach of 
anyone save the most expert specialist, and even he is 
tantalized by his inability to grasp all within his reach. 
That a field is large, overwhelmingly large, ought not 
to deter the educator from entering it. The scientific 
field, for example, is large, overwhelmingly large, but 
when it is systematically classified the teacher is in a posi- 
tion to select that which may have educational value 
even for the youngest child. Without classification it 
might be possible to teach much of practical value, but the 
school course from infancy to adult life would present a 
sorry spectacle. The logical arrangement of scientific 
information is the only criterion of the worth of the com- 
pleted scientific course. The selection of materials for 
presentation at any particular stage depends upon peda- 
gogical insight which takes into account both the goal 
to be reached and the peculiarities of the learner. The 
way in which children learn determines the method of 
approach to any subject, but it sets no standard of worth 
upon the acquisition. The only criterion of excellence 
is to be found within the subject itself in its relation 



THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE lOI 

to human needs. How the child learns that 2x2 = 4 
is a problem in psychology; whether 2 x 2 is actually 4, 
what relation it bears to other mathematical facts, and 
whether it is worth learning at all, are problems reaching 
far beyond child-psychology. In classifying the informa- 
tion within a given field, we establish standards by which 
we Judge the relative worth of component parts and dis- 
criminate between what is essential or characteristic, 
and what is accidental or accessory. Such categories we 
have in the humanities and the sciences, and they control 
the trend of instruction throughout the school course. 
We need such a guide to the industries in order that every 
step from the kindergarten on to the technical school may 
fit into our plan for industrial education. 

Selection of subject matter. — Much confusion in the 
work of manual training has come from a failure to dis- 
tinguish between the psychological guide to methods of 
teaching and organizing subject matter, and the logical 
guide to the sequence of topics and the value of the com- 
ponent parts. The need of food, clothing, and shelter, 
for example, is easily brought home to a child. The 
psychical reaction to the suggestion that he satisfy these 
needs for himself is an excellent starting-point for the 
study of primitive life; it gives a splendid clue to ways of 
approaching certain fundamental industrial processes, 
and for that purpose may often be used advantageously 
in teaching. But to set up this principle as a guide for 
making courses of study is to confound means and ends. 
Everything worth having in this life has a place in the 
gratification of human wants — language and literature, 
science and fine arts, pohtics, law, and religion, no less than 



I02 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

food, clothing, and shelter. What is suitable food, how- 
it is produced, distributed, and prepared for eating, and 
what becomes of it in nutrition is a subject for study 
quite apart from the satisfaction of hunger. The need 
of sustaining life may make the study of great importance, 
but it suggests no classification of the knowledge abound- 
ing in the scientific and industrial processes. Likewise 
the need of speech for the interchange of ideas gives 
no clue to the systematic structure of language, to say 
nothing of the vocabulary and the grammatical charac- 
teristics of any particular language. The conclusion, 
therefore, is that the method of rediscovery of ways and 
means of satisfying human needs is no sufficient guide 
either to what children should learn or to the sequence 
of materials employed in instruction. 

The industrial processes by which man acquires his 
material possessions and shapes them according to his 
desires, are directed to the transformation of natural 
resources. Raw materials are produced and worked 
over; they are distributed and put to use. Each step, if 
properly taken, adds to their value. What constitutes 
value and what means are employed to effect the change 
should be made the subject of instruction. True, the 
amount of human labor involved is immeasurable, the 
variety of human occupation almost inconceivable, and 
the range of productive activity well-nigh beyond our 
understanding, but the fundamental processes are limited 
and relatively simple in their operation. 

Studying products of commerce. — For pedagogical 
purposes, the materials of most significance in the in- 
dustries are (i) foods, (2) textiles, (3) woods, (4) metals, 



THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LITE IO3 

and (5) clays and other allied earth materials. Fuels, 
supplying great industries in themselves, occupy a middle 
ground between industrial materials and the motive 
power employed in the industrial arts. Commerce is 
that industry which uses the products of all other in- 
dustries in making things available for human consump- 
tion. This classification has the advantage of fixing 
attention on the stuffs out of which things are made and 
upon which human ingenuity brings to bear its most 
lavish expenditure of industrial effort. The next step 
is to single out the dominant processes in the successive 
stages of production, manufacture, and distribution, and 
their interrelations, pecuHar to each class of materials. 
The facts concerning these processes constitute the subject 
matter of instruction in the industries. The technical 
skill required in the operation of any industrial process 
is the object of vocational training. 

The curriculum in industrial arts. — A well-organized 
course of study in the industries must be the joint work 
of technical and pedagogical experts. The scientist will 
be called upon to contribute his share, and his contribu- 
tion will be no inconsiderable amount. At one stage 
of the course, emphasis may be placed upon the processes 
of production; at another stage, the stress may be 
upon manufacture, distribution, or consumption. Nature 
study, agriculture, the fisheries, forestry, and mining will 
furnish indispensable information. Geography, biology, 
physics, and chemistry will each add its quota of knowl- 
edge. Facilities for transportation, the production and 
transmission of power, and the agencies of trade and 
commerce will have a bearing on the problem. But the 



I04 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

chief consideration in the course of study is the ordering 
of the industrial processes by which raw materials are 
transformed into things of greater value for the satis- 
faction of human needs. 

Historical development of industry. — The simplest 
industrial processes are often the most primitive. This 
fact suggests the desirabihty of sometimes approaching 
the study in the primary classes from the historical stand- 
point. To make the study of primitive life, however, 
the dominant purpose of instruction leads to the intro- 
duction of much superfluous material which tends to 
crowd the curriculum and overburden the child. Wher- 
ever the approach can be made advantageously by way of 
primitive life or by plays and games which express chil- 
dren's emotions, that method may be employed. The 
impetus gained in this way should be directed to the 
apprehension of the systematic knowledge contained in 
the field under consideration. When textile processes, 
for example, are to be studied, the need of clothing may be 
emphasized and means suggested for gratifying the want. 
Projects for carding, spinning, and weaving may be car- 
ried out in simple ways and illustrated by reference to 
actual operations in bygone times or by the practices of 
contemporaneous primitive people. But to rediscover 
every step in the original development of these arts is to 
miss the purpose of industrial education; it may be good 
industrial history, but it is not good industrial training. 

The industrial aspects of the study, as distinguished 
from the historical, require that the child should acquire 
in some way and at some time — presumably in many 
ways and at widely separated times — a fairly well- 



THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE IO5 

rounded conception of textile processes and should become 
familiar with the most important types of textile prod- 
ucts. It is not enough to acquire a knowledge of the 
primitive process of spinning, even spinning on a wheel, 
and then to pass on to the weaving of a simple rug. Spin- 
ning is an important industry in modem Hfe; it means 
yarns for all manner of fabrics made from a great variety 
of raw materials; it means thread of all kinds; it means 
cordage. How many of our school children, how many 
adults, have any adequate conception of the extent of 
these industries or their bearing on every-day life? And 
yet the processes are simple, and, by actual demonstra- 
tion, supplemented by illustrations cut from current 
magazines or by visits to neighboring factories, the lesson 
can be taught in such a way as to make the learning a 
delight and the knowledge a permanent possession. On 
leaving the elementary school, every child should know, 
it seems to me, the characteristics of cotton, wool, silk, 
and linen, both in the spun and woven forms, and have 
some notion of their value as determined by the processes 
to which they have been subjected. A proper combina- 
tion of handwork, the application of design and the giving 
of information should produce the desired results with- 
out strain and with constantly increasing interest in the 
study. At the end of a high-school course, possibly 
at the end of the grammar school, a girl should be able 
not only to make many articles of clothing, but also to 
discriminate in the choice of fabrics by reference to what 
she has learned in school concerning the nature of the 
several materials and the processes of manufacture. If 
she doesn't get this knowledge in school, when and where 



Io6 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

will she ever get it? And isn't it something which she has 
a right to know? How much time \vill it take, I ask, to 
give her a vastly better equipment in this field than 
ninety per cent of adults have to-day? It is less a problem 
of instruction or school administration, than it is a point 
of view and selection of materials for instruction. Once 
accept my proposition that this is worth doing, and the 
time can easily be found, and some day we shall have 
teachers prepared to do the work. 

The evolution of ceramics. — Again, let me illustrate 
from another field — from the clay industries. Children 
like to make mud pies. The kindergarten turns this 
aptitude to good use in fashioning things by hand mold- 
ing. Of late, primary teachers have adopted clay as a 
convenient medium for expressing art forms. The result 
is thirty plaques, thirty inkwells, or thirty vases — all 
very pretty, decorated and glazed, when put in a row 
on exhibition day. So far I have no criticism. My com- 
plaint is that they stop right there. The chief processes 
in the clay industries are very few: hand molding, turning 
on the potter's wheel, pressing into set forms, and build- 
ing up in permanent shape, as in cement and concrete 
construction. Why not, then, pass from hand molding, 
which can be approached through primitive types, to the 
use of the potter's wheel? A single demonstration of 
this machine, with the use of illustrations which may be 
had in abundance, will give the clue to the entire round 
of the pottery industries. A few samples, varying from 
unglazed earthenware to fine china, will complete the 
teaching equipment. Next come brick and terra cotta. 
But who has ever heard of brickmaking in school? I 



THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE 107 

should like to hear of it because it is an immense industry, 
the products of which are visible on every hand — soft 
brick, hard brick, fire brick, red brick, yellow brick 
ornamental brick, terra cotta. Why should not our 
children know more about these things than we do? I 
venture to say that ten hours of instruction judiciously 
spread over two or three years, and properly correlated 
with nature study and geography, will give to sixth-grade 
children a better appreciation of one of the staple building 
materials than ninety out of every hundred adults have 
to-day. Is it worth the time? If so, the time can be 
found. 

I might illustrate my point by any of the staple foods, by 
glass, by woods, or by metals. The working up of these 
materials, the getting them ready for use, does not in- 
volve many processes. The combination of processes is 
most intricate and the variety of products simply inde- 
scribable, but with an eye single to tj^pical ways by which 
raw materials are transformed it is not impossible to leave 
with twelve-year-old children a lasting impression of the 
modes of operation in any industry and the nature of the 
most important results. 

Strengthening the curriculum. — I am well aware that 
this plan will be criticized by some as being retrogressive, 
a return to a logical control of childish activities, and by 
others as abandonment of the new education through 
motor training. It may mean revolution, but if it results 
in a richer and more unified curriculum one critic is an- 
swered, and if the curriculum is thereby simplified the other 
critic will get no hearing from the American public. But 
how is the curriculum strengthened? First, it must be 



I08 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

conceded that the content of industrial education, as I 
have defined it, has some value; whatever that may 
amount to is a distinct gain. In the second place, the 
plan calls for richer courses in arithmetic, nature study, and 
geography. The quantitative measurements of arith- 
metic will find concrete application in every step of the 
industrial process from the first step of production of 
the raw materials to the end of the series when goods are 
turned to practical use. How much, how many times, 
how often, in what proportion, at what cost, are ques- 
tions which must be answered by the child at every turn. 
The computations called for in the manufacture, trans- 
portation, and final distribution of any commodity are 
in daily use in trade and commerce, and should be the 
staple requirement of the school. Nothing will vitalize 
the study of arithmetic more than to create in the school 
a need for quantitative measurement and for the employ- 
ment of business methods in business affairs. Such a 
situation suggests clearly the place and scope of commer- 
cial training in the upper grades or in high school for those 
who are in training for commercial vocations. The natural 
distribution of metals, fuels, clays, and other earth 
materials, the climatic and physiographic conditions which 
determine the location, amount, character, and avail- 
ability of our flora and fauna, the factors which control 
transportation by land and water — these are problems 
in geography which become concrete and vital in the 
study of industries. The correlations are so obvious 
that only a stupid teacher can miss them. In nature 
study we shall find a real place for the elements of agri- 
culture and forestry; no longer aimless meandering in 



THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE lOQ 

any scientific field, but definite attention to those occupa- 
tions concerned with the production of materials good for 
food, clothing, and shelter, the conditions calculated to 
give best results, and the resistance which men meet in 
doing their work. The growing of any crop, even in a 
window garden, will epitomize the farmer's labors in tilHng 
the soil, supplying plant food,. utilizing light, heat, and air, 
overcoming disease and insect pests, and reaping his 
harvest. Every step takes on new meaning when the 
learner sees its place in the series of operations culminat- 
ing in the commercial food supply of his own community, 
its sanitary regulation and domestic consumption. The 
elements of physiology and hygiene, and of physics and 
chemistry, are also called into requisition; they are all 
indispensable in fixing values of industrial products and 
determining economy in technical operation. What 
makes for hygienic living is from the economic standpoint 
as well worth knowing as what mechanical appliance 
will most increase the output. A proper study of the 
industries, therefore, I contend, will bring about a unified 
and closely correlated course in the biological and phys- 
ical sciences by way of supplying the information wanted 
by the child in adjusting himself to the real world. 

Correlation between school subjects. — Perhaps some 
timorous soul will interpret my outhne of the pedagogical 
relations between the sciences and the industries as a 
denial of any independence to arithmetic, nature study, 
and geography. Far from it. The scientific subjects 
have a function of their own in the curriculum, as do the 
humanities and the industries. The use of language and 
the arts of reading and writing in studying the indus- 



no THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

tries, even the generous use of supplementary readings 
giving industrial information, does not preclude the study 
of literature in progressively systematic form. The 
course of study in every subject may have two aspects, 
one peculiar to itself by virtue of which we recognize it 
as a distinct subject, the other relative to other subjects 
which the child may be learning. In arithmetic, that 
which is peculiarly mathematical looks forward to the 
systematic development of the science of mathematics, 
and it is possible so to emphasize this aspect as to make 
the study almost exclusively formal. The natural 
sciences may be so taught as to have no direct bearing on 
the child's experience. My thought is that any sub- 
ject worthy of a place in the school curriculum should be 
developed along systematic hues characteristic of the 
subject itself by means which function in the child's 
experience with other subjects of information. This is 
only another way of saying that whatever is learned 
should be applied in practice. Perhaps better said, it 
is the harmonious interaction of all subjects in the cur- 
riculum which gives zest to study, solidarity in the knowl- 
edge acquired, and efficiency in converting knowledge 
into power. The reason for this is that the learning process 
is a unity; the child's experience in gathering information 
from many sources is unified, and it is his own; his in- 
stincts, impulses, and all his activities belong to him alone, 
and however segregated the ultimate ends of his endeavor 
may be in the mind of his teacher, he weaves all his ex- 
periences into the fabric of his own life. Whether or no 
that fabric be technically correct depends upon the 
systematic ordering of his experiences; its serviceable- 



THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE III 

ness for any particular purpose depends upon the mate- 
rials which have entered into it. 

Revising the school program. — One other important 
question awaits an answer. Will the plan I have proposed 
tend to simplify the curriculum? My answer is that at 
least four subjects will be combined into one, and in some 
elementary schools one teacher will take the place of 
four. Manual training, fine arts, domestic art, and 
domestic science will drop out below the seventh grade, 
and in their place we shall have the one subject of in- 
dustrial arts, the elements of industries. The term 
" manual training," if used at all, will cover the forms 
of motor expression employed in teaching reading, writing 
and drawing, as well as the manual exercises used in 
agriculture or weaving or pottery-making or carpentry. 
There will be no hours set apart in the school program 
for work exclusively with the hands, and teachers will 
not be expected to provide manual occupations for every 
minute of the time assigned to any subject. When 
manual work is needed it will be demanded as insistently 
and employed as successfully in the humanities and the 
sciences as in the industries. In the lower school, manual 
exercises will be used as a means of self-expression, a 
method of teaching rather than a subject of instruction 
or a way of acquiring technical skill. That is, cooking 
in the lower school enables the child to know what hap- 
pens when heat is applied to foods, and in what respects 
foods thereby are made more serviceable; cooking as an 
art in which a girl should excel belongs to a later period 
when she is fitting herself for housekeeping. Technical 
skill is a distinct aim in vocational training, but in the 



112 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

earlier years of school the purpose is general rather than 
specific, cultural rather than vocational. 

Development of the creative instinct. — In all industrial 
processes, wherever man transforms materials into things 
of greater value, he employs a technic peculiar to the 
situation, and gives to the product a touch which pleases 
his aesthetic sense. Earthen bowls might be made, I 
suppose, without appreciable artistic merit, but the fact 
is, that the crudest pottery shows an effort to attain 
some ideal standard. This striving for artistic effect is 
as instinctive in childhood as in primitive man, and no 
worker ever loses it until he loses all pride in his handi- 
work. It is the source of every fine art. It is self-expres- 
sion, which is at its best when bodied forth in doing things 
worth doing well. The teacher of art, therefore, finds 
his best opportunity in that field which offers greatest 
inducement to constructive design. The art training 
which belongs in the elementary school is that training 
which makes for a better appreciation of aesthetic stand- 
ards and which finds expression in making tilings more 
pleasing than they otherwdse would be. It adds no 
burden to the curriculum; on the contrary, it enlivens it 
and makes its tasks more pleasurable because more grati- 
fying to personal wants. 

Revitalizing school subjects. — A systematic course 
in the industries will have the additional advantage of 
making it easier to teach everything else in the curricu- 
lum. Not only will the study of industrial processes 
give rise to concrete problems in mathematics and the 
natural sciences, but the practical character of such 
problems will incite children to find the surest and most 



THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE II3 

businessKke way of solving them. Time will be saved 
for drill in every other line. With fewer subjects and more 
practical problems, I should confidently expect better 
results in the three R's and a more thorough discipline 
resulting from work in every subject. There would be no 
attempt to cover the whole field of human effort; the 
standard set in the study of industries whereby only the 
essential processes should be included in the course would 
react upon the courses of study in the humanities and the 
sciences. Let it be agreed that only fundamentals have 
a place in the elementary curriculum, and it will be com- 
paratively easy to insist upon thorough work. Under 
such conditions there can be no excuse for not getting 
it. Those who believe, as I do, in the educational value 
of work well done, will join hands right here with those 
who advocate a curriculum which imposes tasks worth 
doing well. 

Education for equality. — My conclusion is that in- 
dustrial education is essential to the social and political 
well-being of a democracy. It is the privilege of all, 
rather than the duty of a few, to be informed on matters 
affecting the social welfare of the body politic. A knowl- 
edge of how men get a living, the nature of their work, 
and the value of it, is a prerequisite to intelligent apprecia- 
tion of the dignity of labor. A sympathetic understand- 
ing of -the conditions underlying industrial competition 
will make for civil order and social stability. Training 
for citizenship may not safely disregard the dominant 
interests of the great majority of citizens. The pubhc 
school must teach that which all should know. If only 
six years can be had for this work, the work must be done 

TREND IN ED — 8 



114 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

in six years. There is no alternative. It must be done 
in such a way, too, that children will grasp its significance 
and carry its impressions throughout their lives. It 
must establish such habits of thought and conduct that 
all subsequent work will be aided by the discipline. This 
is the ideal of the elementary school. Joined with the 
humanities and the sciences, a study of the industries 
rounds out the education of the citizen and equips him 
to begin his vocational training. On the threshold of 
active life it puts him on a par with his fellows. It assures 
him that kind of equality which is the opportunity of 
every American. 



CHAPTER VII 

PROFESSIONAL FACTORS IN THE TRAINING OF 
THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER ^ 

MY purpose in this chapter is to discuss what may 
be properly considered professional in the 
training of the high-school teacher, as distin- 
guished from the academic or cultural. What con- 
stitutes professional training? What light is shed on this 
problem by the example of other learned professions? 

Ethical relationships between mankind. — The eco- 
nomic law of supply and demand determines the vocations 
of most men as it controls the products of their labor. 
In some vocations, however, another factor comes into 
play. The rights of others in mind, body, and estate 
have to be reckoned with. In most occupations these 
human rights are implicit; they are cared for in the common 
law. But in others they are guarded specifically by 
statute. Not everyone who has the opportunity and 
inclination may practice law or medicine. By the law 
of the State, those who are pledged to see justice done 
between man and man, those who by the nature of their 
calling are in a position to imperil the health or lives of 
their fellows, those upon whom the public depends for 
protection, or who belong to the civil service, are licensed 
to pursue their vocations. Putting aside those voca- 
tions which are licensed for revenue only, it appears that 

' A revised reprint from the Educational Review, March, 1913, used by courtesy 
of the pubHshers. 

115 



Il6 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

when the State interferes between the practitioner and 
the pubhc, there is an ethical principle at stake. The 
well-being of the many must not be sacrificed to the 
ambition or the cupidity of the few. 

The pursuit of ethical ideals was once the chief character- 
istic of the learned professions. Witness the moral code 
contained in the Hippocratic oath which has been the 
gateway to the profession of medicine for two thousand 
years. Think of the vows taken by the candidate for the 
priesthood, and of the pledges exacted upon admission 
to the bar. The modern State but reenacts the profes- 
sional decalogue when it insists upon proper evidence of 
moral character in licensing the lawyers, physicians, and 
teachers. Some day the principle will be extended to 
embrace all vocations which touch on the ethical relations 
of man and man. 

Cardinal principles of professional service. — The first 
qualification for professional service, therefore, is good 
character — the living embodiment of moral standards, 
the conscious striving for high ideals. The professional 
worker looks to the future and is pledged by his vocation 
to make the future better than the present. Such an aim 
impHes in these days the possession of two other quali- 
fications, each potent and indispensable. One of these 
is specialized knowledge, and the other is skill. These 
three — an ethical aim, specialized knowledge, and tech- 
nical skill — are the trinity upon which professional 
service rests. The stonecutter may have superior skill, 
but with only a modicum of specialized knowledge and lack- 
ing an ethical aim, he remains the artisan; the physician 
who is ignorant of his subject, however high his aim or 



TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER II7 

however skillful in practice, is still a quack; if he is learned 
in high degree but lacks professional skill, he is a confirmed 
bungler; the lawyer who is versed in all the sub tili ties of 
the law and adroit in legal procedure, but who disregards 
the ethics of his profession, is a charlatan, despised of men. 

The teacher may be a professional worker. But he 
who puts himself in the professional class must know ac- 
curately what he is to do, have the requisite skill for 
doing it, and do his work under the guidance of high 
ethical principles. The teacher who is ignorant of his 
subject is a quack; the teacher who lacks professional skill 
is a bungler; the teacher who is not inspired by high ideals 
is a charlatan. 

The road the masters have trod. — My idea of profes- 
sional training is that it is a process of giving to novices 
what the masters have acquired. It is helping the begin- 
ner to get what he might get for himself under favorable 
conditions. There is nothing in the training of a teacher 
in a professional school, for example, that differs from the 
training of any teacher anywhere, except that the good 
professional school affords opportunities, equipment, and 
guidance that few teachers can get elsewhere. The pro- 
fessional school for teachers, like the professional schools 
of law, medicine, and engineering, is intended to help the 
novice travel the road that every great master has trav- 
eled, but to do it more quickly, economically, and 
confidently than he otherwise could. 

Focusing educational effort. — In my discussion of the 
professional training of the high-school teacher, I appeal 
directly to the experience of the best teachers before me 
and to the best in each one of my readers. What is the 



Il8 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

process by which you have made yourselves masters? Re- 
calhng your own experiences, what would you do if you 
had a fair field and all possible favors? How would you 
attain your standards of excellence in the three cardinal 
principles of professional service? 

First, specialized knowledge. — It is generally taken for 
granted that the college graduate knows enough to teach 
in a high school; in some localities graduation from a 
normal school, or even from a secondary school, is con- 
sidered sufficient evidence of ability to do high-school 
work. I wish to go on record as one who believes that 
graduation from a college is no evidence whatever of 
ability to teach anything. So far as the college is a col- 
lege and not a professional school, its business is not the 
training of the teacher or of any other professional worker. 
The college aims to give that general knowledge which 
should lie at the foundation of every kind of professional 
superstructure. What the profession demands is special- 
ized knowledge, the mastery of some small field in its 
relations to other fields of knowledge. But knowledge spe- 
cialized for the sake of professional service is not isolated 
information. It is rather the product of broad scholarship 
focused upon a particular subject. 

Right here is where many excellent persons, chiefly some 
of our ancient classicists and modern scientists, make a 
grave mistake. They argue that the chief end of scholarly 
study is the mental disciphne that it affords, or the pur- 
suit of truth for its own sake, rather than the under- 
standing of the subject in its cultural setting. Isolated 
knowledge may be useful in certain technical lines, but 
knowledge teeming with human interests and specialized 



TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER IIQ 

along cultural lines is indispensable in professional service. 

A need for an intellectual perspective. — It follows, 
therefore, that there must be a general preparation for 
the beginning of professional study. Call it what you 
please — intellectual perspective, cultural setting, liberal 
education — it is something which gives breadth of view 
and that largeness of life which form the very foundation 
of every kind of professional service. It is precisely this 
training for which the college stands. I do not pretend 
that every college graduate has it, or that there is no other 
way of getting a liberal education; nor do I claim that a 
college degree should be the stepping-stone to every 
learned profession. But I do claim that the intending 
high-school teacher needs a course of general training the 
equivalent of the best given in any college in the land, and 
needs it, too, as a prerequisite to the technical studies of 
his profession. 

A plea for sane scholarship. — The professional train- 
ing of the teacher properly begins with the process of nar- 
rowing the field or of intensifying work in some part of 
it, or, to use a better figure, of focusing what one knows 
on the problem in hand. It is more than mere specializa- 
tion in the subject. For example, a teacher once came 
to me from the wilds of New York state, a region barbaric 
only in an educational way, however, saying that he 
wanted to fit himself in a six-weeks' summer session to 
teach Latin. My first question was, '* How much Latin do 
you know? " Because my business is the training of 
teachers I have become hardened to the pitiful exhibition 
of ignorance so often displayed by those who want to teach, 
but I was not prepared for the answer to my question in 



I20 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

this particular instance. " I don't know any Latin," he 
said; " that is what I have come here for." " But how do 
you expect to get ready to teach Latin in six weeks? " 
" Well," he repHed, " I* (Jon't have to begin till Septem- 
ber and all I have to do next year is to teach Latin lessons 
and Caesar; I guess I can do that." A little further prob- 
ing disclosed the fact that the candidate was a high- 
school teacher in good standing, legally certified to do 
what he proposed, had the sanction of his principal and 
school board for the step, and was actually engaged to 
teach, two months hence, a subject which he had never 
studied in his Hfe. It is a striking commentary on the 
situation to say he was more surprised than I had been 
when I told him that he had come to the wrong place. 
His last word to me was, " Why, I thought Teachers Col- 
lege was a school for the training of teachers." 

Actual fact as this tale is, it sounds enough like a parable 
to furnish me a moral for to-day's sermon. Suppose this 
teacher did get what he wanted and after two months of 
cramming actually began to teach Latin according to 
the Regents' syllabus. What kind of equipment did he 
have? I suppose one might say it was highly speciaHzed 
and focused on his problem. But it is a fine example 
of what I have called isolated knowledge. It is not 
sound scholarship. 

Now, take as an example the opposite extreme. Sup- 
pose a scholar in Latin, one who has made an exhaustive 
study of the Latin language, Roman history, archaeology, 
Hterature, law — in short, one who appreciates the genius 
of Roman civilization and knows its bearing on modern 
life — suppose such a scholar were asked to teach Latin 



TRAINENG OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 121 

lessons and Caesar to high-school pupils, aged fourteen 
years, boys and girls, untamed Americans who idolize 
Christy Mathewson, and by parental ambition dedicated 
to the college. What chance has your scholar of getting 
ready for this job in six weeks? Safe to say that the 
teacher who starts with nothing in July will meet his class 
with more assurance in September than the scholar who 
has spent years in getting ready. 

The building of a curriculum. — There is no possibility 
whatever of giving professional training to an ignoramus. 
The sculptor may be a stonecutter if he have the tech- 
nical skill, but a stonecutter can never become the sculp- 
tor until he gets the vision of the angel in the unformed 
block of marble. The teacher whose kruowledge of the 
subject is confined within the covers of two or three 
books — Somebody's Latin Lessons and Caesar's Com- 
mentaries, Books I-IV, we will say — has no trouble in 
selecting what he will teach. No more has the stone- 
cutter to do with determining his task when it is defined 
for him in a blue-print drawing. But the master, he 
who has command of himself and of his subject as well, 
must pick and choose at every step. Time is precious; 
opportunity will not wait. He must act, and his artistic 
eye is quick to condemn every slip that he makes. 

Right here is the chance for the most helpful lessons 
in professional training. In the professional school for 
teachers we call it a course in the selection of materials 
and in the arrangement of these materials in a curriculum. 
The wider the range of scholarship, the more one knows 
of his subject, the greater is the need of wise selection 
and orderly arrangement of materials. One who is full 



122 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

of his subject does not unload it all in one year or upon 
one class. What may safely be given out wiU ultimately 
be learned by any conscientious teacher, but he who 
has much to give is the one who learns most readily and is 
most appreciative of what the experienced guide can 
tell him. 

Injecting vitality into the course of study. — We find 
in practice that even the best scholars among our college 
graduates are not ready for a technical course in the 
selection and arrangement of materials. Too often 
their training is scrappy. The elective system makes it 
easy to follow a favorite professor or to omit some essen- 
tial part of a subject. I recall the case of a graduate of 
one of our best universities who had studied Latin four 
years in high school and four years in college, but who 
had never had a course at any time in Roman history, 
and who knew next to nothing of Roman life. It is not 
at all unusual to find college graduates who have had 
years of training in history made up of fragments called 
the Reformation, the Renaissance, the French Revolu- 
tion, and the like, but with no real understanding of the 
sweep of modern history. A large part of the trouble 
with teaching the sciences is due to the fact that physics, 
chemistry, geography, physiography, meteorology, zoology, 
entomology, physiology, bacteriology, and the rest are 
taught as isolated units. Even in mathematics, the most 
clearly defined of all our high-school subjects, the college 
graduate comes to his work removed by just four years 
from the problem with which he has to deal. In all such 
cases the first step is to get back on high-school ground. 
The Latinist must read Caesar, Cicero, and Virgil, not neces- 



TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 1 23 

sarily stopping with four books of the Gallic War, or with 
the Catihnian orations, or with an abbreviated edition of 
the Aeneid; he should learn to speak the language at least 
well enough to keep it from seeming dead; and he should 
inject himself far enough into Roman history to feel the 
glow of that Golden Age forever imperishable. Likewise 
the mathematician needs to know what arithmetic, algebra, 
geometry, and trigonometry stand for, what they are, 
what they mean in every-day life, and what they prepare 
for in the higher mathematics. It is perspective that is 
wanted in this subject, as in every other subject of the 
high school. 

Intrinsic worths. — Only by knowing intimately what 
these subjects are worth in and of themselves, what their 
practical application is, and what they signify for later 
development, can we expect our teachers to put correct 
emphasis on what they teach. The ignorant teacher 
is prone to drive every nail home by the hardest kind of 
knocks; the scholarly teacher knows that time and strength 
are easily wasted on trivial topics, while too much atten- 
tion can scarcely be given to important matters. What 
is important and what is relatively unimportant at any 
stage is well worth knowing. It is professional knowledge 
which may come from experience, but which thrives best 
when many minds, and all of them acute, are bent on solving 
a professional problem. This is one sufficient reason 
for the existence of the right kind of professional school 
for teachers. The school which does not make it a corner 
stone has no excuse for being. 

The complement of knowledge — practice. — The next 
factor in professional training is technical skill. Im- 



124 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

portant as this is in equipment of a teacher, or of any 
professional worker, no one will claim, I fancy, that any 
considerable amount of it can be acquired in a professional 
school. The young physician does get some chance to 
try his hand in hospital practice, but nowadays the pro- 
spective lawyer and engineer are still novices on entering 
their life work. Some direction along practical lines, 
it is generally admitted, should accompany the theoretical 
training of the professional course, but for many years 
there has been a steady decrease in the time given to 
practical work in all our professional schools. In some 
quarters, in medicine for example, there are signs of 
renewed emphasis upon the practical side, but in the 
large I think it may be safely said that modern profes- 
sional training is chiefly concerned with imparting scientific 
knowledge. The ideal union of theory and practice is 
conspicuous for the absence of practice. 

Be this as it may, it will also be conceded that to the 
extent which the young practitioner is obliged to work 
independently from the beginning is it necessary to equip 
him with the skill requisite to do his work acceptably. 
The young physician, to a greater degree than the young 
lawyer or engineer, is obliged to work alone; hence the 
demand for practical training in the hospital. So with 
the teacher. He is obliged to do his work, under super- 
vision, to be sure, and along a prescribed course, but still 
to a large extent independently. The call is for teachers 
of experience, and the experience gained by practice 
teaching is always considered better than none at all. 
We need more of it in our training schools, rather than 
less. 



TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 1 25 

Individual differences. — It is important, however, 
that we keep in mind a fundamental distinction in the 
quality of work that may enter into a teacher's equipment. 
That which is suited to one t3qDe of mind may be out of 
place with another. For example, when we wish to give 
technical skill to an artisan's apprentice we see to it that 
he knows what he is to do, that he is shown how to do it, 
and that he repeats the operation often enough to make 
it automatic. The best results come from long practice 
without break or variation. The artist, on the other hand, 
encourages initiative and invites variety of treatment. 
The gulf fixed between the two in this respect is one of 
intellectual ability. The lower the grade of intelligence, 
the more nearly the training approximates that employed 
in breaking animals; the higher the grade of intelligence, 
the better the understanding of what is to be done and of 
the means to accomplish the purpose. The person of 
high intelligence is, or may be, self-directive. 

The real problem of the training school for teachers with 
respect to technical skill is in the differentiation of types 
according to intellectual and professional acumen. It 
seems obvious to me that the kind and extent of prac- 
tical work appropriate to the needs of the normal school 
may not be best adapted to the training of high-school 
or college teachers. It may well happen that the rural 
teacher who enters a normal school at the age of eighteen 
will require an apprentice training strictly analogous 
to the training given the carpenter or the plumber, while 
the university graduate at twenty-five may safely be left 
to his own devices in directing a seminar course. In the 
latter case the important thing is that the teacher knows 



126 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

his subject, appreciates what he is to do, and has a lively 
sense of his personal responsibility in getting the work 
done. Success depends primarily upon the combination 
of knowledge and understanding guided by high ethical 
ideals. The man of power will find his way even in the 
classroom; the worth of his work will be measured by 
his ethical standards. 

The high-school teacher stands midway between these 
extremes. He is not overly intelligent but he is generally 
not an ignoramus. He needs practice under guidance, 
and most of all he needs practice in self-criticism and 
self-direction. 

A need for an ethical attitude. — This leads directly to 
my third point — the ethical aim of instruction. Efficiency 
in work presupposes that the worker have a clear concep- 
tion of what he is working for. If the work be merely 
hewing to a line, the line must stand out and the worker 
must know what it m^ans. If it means merely a boundary 
beyond which he dare not go, we put the laborer on a low 
plane; if he sees in it the expression of a scientific calcu- 
lation of the strength of material, or if he regards it as a 
unit in some artistic creation — above all, if he has him- 
self drawn the line and knows that it belongs scientifically 
or artistically just where he has put it, we place the 
worker unhesitatingly in the professional class. The 
essence of professional service is found in the ethical 
attitude of the worker. All else is subsidiary, however 
essential it may be to the work in hand. In the case of 
the teacher, the knowledge of the subject which he 
teaches is the instrument which he uses more or less skill- 
fully in the accomplishment of his purpose. His purpose 



TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 1 27 

is to educate by means of the formal studies of the cur- 
riculum and the discipline of the school used in such way 
as to produce the results desired. 

Developing a professional consciousness. — The chief 
criticism of the high school is that it doesn't know what 
it is doing. Teachers are deluded into thinking that they 
are teaching Latin, or history, or mathematics, when they 
are really giving instruction in fragmentary and unrelated 
parts of a subject. A high-school principal once told me 
that he has teachers of arithmetic and algebra and geom- 
etry but no teacher of mathematics. Furthermore, it rarely 
happens that even our best teachers of the mathematical 
subjects know the commonest applications of mathematics 
in industrial and commercial life. Few secondary teachers 
have any real grasp of the subjects of the curriculum, 
and fewer still seem to know that any subject other than 
their own has any excuse for being. In a word, teamwork 
is conspicuousl}'' absent from our high schools. 

This situation is due partly to lack of academic 
training, but largely to lack of interest in the pro- 
fessional aspects of school subjects and the school cur- 
riculum. Possibly the comprehensive examination will 
correct the academic deficiencies, but the evolution of a 
suitable curriculum and the making of character by means 
of scholarly instruction and moral suasion depend upon 
professional insight. Some teachers seem to have in- 
tuitive knowledge of this kind, but the best learn some- 
thing from experience. It is the function of professional 
training to bring this knowledge to consciousness and to 
put even the dullest teacher in the way of appreciating 
what the best teacher may do instinctively, and to enable 



128 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

the most favored to acquire mastery more surely and 
expeditiously than he otherwise could. 

It is not my intention to weary my readers by a dis- 
cussion of the meaning of education or of the function 
of education in a democracy. It suffices here to enumer- 
ate the methods of securing such an understanding on the 
part of young teachers and to point out a rough-and- 
ready way of testing the efficiency of teaching. 

Aids to instruction. — Teaching is no new art. There 
were teachers worthy of the name before books were 
invented or football was made a university discipline. 
Schools and school systems played their part before 
ours were thought of. The more one studies the history 
and principles of education, the less one is inclined to dis- 
agree with the preacher who declared that there is no 
new thing under the sun. The teacher who thinks his 
problems peculiar to himself and to his pupils will find 
light and inspiration in the historical accounts of the work 
of other teachers in other times. As a check on provin- 
cial notions of educational aims and values I commend a 
comparative study of the educational methods and school 
administration of the leading European countries. As a 
guide to schoolroom practice we are just beginning to 
appreciate the value of modern educational psychology. 
It opens up a new world to the beginner and forces him to 
self-criticism. It helps him to understand the learn- 
ing process and makes him conscious of the way children 
think and acquire their habits. From physiology and 
hygiene we can get light on the physical well-being of our 
pupils. It were easy to dwell at length on the pos- 
sibilities of such studies, all of which should have some 



TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 1 29 

part in the curriculum of a professional school for teachers, 
but I prefer to conclude my argument with a statement 
of one phase of the general subject. It is, however, only 
one phase of many which might be treated at length. I 
select it as a sample because it has special value in second- 
ary education. 

The obligation of American schools. — What is the 
essential character of education in a democracy and how 
may we Judge its efficiency? What obligations are im- 
posed upon the American public school by virtue of the 
fact that it is American and public? 

It is apparent that there can be no great difference in 
opinion regarding the desirability of those virtues which 
make for character. In respect to most of these we are 
one with the educators of other civilized countries, past 
and present. Our ideals of scholarship and discipline 
and of vocational efficiency may outrun our practice, 
but they are not essentially different from those which 
obtain elsewhere. I say nothing of the right of anyone 
to seek another type of education, or of the preference 
which anyone may express for the private institution 
or for individual training. I have now no quarrel with 
those who think that art can be taught for art's sake, or 
mathematics for the sake of mathematics. What I do 
insist on is that the American public school, supported 
by public taxation, is under obligation to train American 
citizens, men and women able and willing to cooperate 
with their fellows in the attainment of American ideals. 

A new social order. — Our mode of government is not 
our only, or even our chief, point of difference from other 
countries. It seems to me from the educational stand- 

TREND IN ED. — 9 



130 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

point that the crux of the matter is to be found in our 
social order. American life is not regulated by tradition 
of class or caste; we have no controlling institutions of 
church or guild ; there is no social standard which is author- 
itatively binding on any American youth. As yet the 
way is open to talent and abihty all along the line. Our 
only controlling institution, if such it may be regarded, 
is our school system — a self-imposed and self-directed 
organ of our democracy. 

Whatever else the typical American is or may be, he is 
alert, progressive and independent. We expect him to 
be capable of directing his personal affairs, of keeping 
abreast of the times, of initiating reforms, and passing 
judgment on his own acts and those of his fellows. Peri- 
odically we ask him to pass upon questions of national 
policy and of international importance. Theoretically 
the American voter is a sovereign in his own right. I 
am well aware that the picture is easily overdrawn and 
that the American voter is less than he should be, but if 
the American citizen were what he should be, we should 
spell " Voter " with a capital letter. 

The fact is that we do look for intelligent self-direction 
in every act of life. The farmer looks for it in his laborers; 
the business man expects it in his clerks; the corporations 
want it in their employees; we need it in the professions, 
and count it a failure when we fail to get it. We have 
no other criterion so universal and so reliable by which 
to judge of efficiency in American life. 

Schooling for intelligent self-direction. — Suppose we 
apply it to our schools and school work. What is a good 
school in a system of schools? Surely one that knows 



TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER I3I 

what part it plays in the total scheme and is capable of 
playing that part in an intelligent manner. What is 
good school administration? Surely that kind of control 
which permits and encourages intelligent self-direction 
in all parts of the system. And yet how often do we see 
school systems governed by autocratic dictum in which 
the component parts are permitted no shadow of initiative 
and denied all chance of self-direction. Such a system 
belongs under a paternal government in which laws and 
orders take the place of democratic freedom. What is 
good discipline in a school or classroom? Is it the kind 
that is begotten of fear and imposed by authority? I 
have heard principals and teachers read out on the opening 
days of school a list of penalties for infractions of the 
law, but I have never been persuaded that laws unsupported 
by public opinion are any more successful in school than 
outside. The lockstep and monitorial system no more 
belong by right in American schools than they belong 
in the American home, or in public meetings, or in busi- 
ness. The best discipline is that which secures the great- 
est freedom to the individual consistent with the rights 
of his fellows. The trained observer can tell at a glance 
whether a class is held in order by superimposed authority 
or is orderly because all want to do some task. It is an 
impressive and reassuring sight to see, as I did recently, 
fifteen hundred high-school pupils walk leisurely from their 
classrooms to the assembly hall, find their places with- 
out confusion, and instantly stop their conversation 
when the clock indicated the hour for the exercises to 
begin. Herein is self-control worthy of American citizen- 
ship. To say to one, come, and he cometh, and to another 



132 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

go, and he goeth, may be an ideal of military discipline 
and it may occasionally be necessary in home and school, 
but the ideal of discipline in American schools will not 
be reached until such commands are unnecessary to 
secure obedience and effective cooperation. 

The tests of instructional efficiency. — The same test 
may be applied to teaching. Does it make for intelligent 
self-direction? First consider the prevailing method of 
assigning home tasks. How often the order is to solve 
the next twenty problems, to translate the next fifty lines, 
or to read the next ten pages, with no instruction on the 
method of approach, not even a hint as to the purpose 
of the task or its connection with what has gone before. 
The result we are all familiar with. Blind guessing at 
the answer, cut-and-try methods of solution, time wasted 
in thumbing a lexicon, illegitimate assistance sought 
from parents or fellow pupils — almost everything except 
straightforward learning. From such a method, when per- 
sistently used, we have no right to expect anything but bad 
intellectual habits. Moreover, I am persuaded that it 
ultimately leads to moral degeneracy, because the prize 
goes generally to the most dishonest player. The only 
corrective that I know of is to assign tasks that can be 
done without assistance and to see to it that they are 
worked logically step by step from data already in the 
possession of the pupil. The ability to tackle a problem 
courageously, to analyze its component parts, and to work 
through it logically, is of vastly more account in school 
and in later life than the art of guessing at the result, 
however brilliantly the guessing may be done. We need 
to put greater emphasis on how pupils learn and less 



TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 133 

on what results they get. If they are trained to be in- 
telligently self-directive there need be no fear of the 
results 

The functioning of knowledge. — Next consider class- 
room practice. At its worst it may be merely hearing 
recitations or a demonstration of guesswork with black- 
board accompaniment. It were a euphemism to label 
such efforts teaching or instruction. It may be something 
better, however, and still not merit approbation. For 
example, much of the best teaching we find in our schools 
and colleges contents itself with imparting information. 
Pupils may seem interested and stow away fact upon 
fact against the duty of examination. The final test 
may be satisfactory, measured in percentage of correct 
answers. Nevertheless such work may be wholly de- 
ceptive. What is learned may be useless because it is 
isolated, or untrustworthy because it is improperly related 
in the experience of the individual. The old-time books 
on arithmetic had a chapter on Alligation which some of 
us learned to perfection. It was isolated knowledge 
then, and has remained imperfectly related to the experi- 
ence of all of us whose business is other than the blend- 
ing of liquors. The only benefit derived from that chapter 
was practice in computation, which might have been 
gained from any other arithmetical task. Memorizing 
of facts or processes is of Httle value, even though an 
examination shows that they are accurately and tena- 
ciously kept in mind, unless such facts and processes can 
be used by the learner. So much time and energy are 
wasted in this way that one pities teachers who fail to 
see the good they might do. Just a little intelligent self- 



134 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

direction would lead them to take the next step. It is 
highly important that fundamentals be accurately learned. 
The alphabet, multiplication table, declensions, paradigms, 
and the like, must be memorized, but the good teacher 
does not stop there or with any number of similar tasks. 
He uses them in all possible combinations and permu- 
tations. He counts them means or instruments for a 
higher purpose. One rehable test of success is found in 
the widening intellectual horizon of his pupils; another 
is in their ability to use what they have in the acquisi- 
tion of new knowledge. When a pupil learns to direct 
himself intelligently in interpreting the facts of his own 
experience and in enlarging that experience by gaining 
new knowledge, he is on the highroad to a liberal 
education. 

Training competent leaders. — I have dwelt at some 
length on what I consider the chief essential of good 
teaching because we see so little of it in our high schools, 
notwithstanding the fact that it is a characteristic of 
training for leadership in all kinds of schools the world 
over. If we are to get competent leaders we must train 
them to be intelligently self-directive. The secondary 
school exists for the purpose of selecting and training, 
so far as it goes, those who must bear the responsibility 
that attaches to the enjoyment of superior advantages. 
Historically, the secondary school exists for this purpose 
and to this end it is supported in America at public 
expense. 

The teaching personnel. — Now that I have had my 
say, or tried to say what I had in mind, I realize that 
I have said little on the training of high-school teachers. 



TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER I35 

But I confess to little interest in the routine training of 
secondary teachers or of any other teachers, if by that 
is meant courses of instruction in formal pedagogy or 
predigested pedagogic methods. As I look at it, there 
are many ways of getting educational results. Your 
way may not be my way and your pupils may differ 
from mine in ability, in accomplishment, and in aim. 
So long as teachers differ and pupils differ there can be 
no invariable method. That is best which is best adapted 
to the occasion, all factors considered. My interest 
centers in ways and means of getting teachers who are 
liberally educated, who know their subjects and have the 
high ambition to train their pupils for leadership in a 
social order that demands intelligent self-direction. I 
have no patience with those who pretend to esoteric wis- 
dom by virtue of their office or their training. By their 
fruits ye shall know them. The good teacher is not a 
pedant, a pedagogue, or an egotist. He labors that others 
may enter into the fruits of his labor. Unless it be guided 
by this ethical ideal, professional training is useless and 
worse than useless. 

Instruction as a fine art. — One other feature of second- 
ary education deserves more than passing mention, but 
in addressing high-school teachers it were superfluous 
to dwell upon it. I refer to school management, the act 
of making a school a good place to live in. It is some- 
thing acquired by all good teachers, but, like skill in 
teaching, it can hardly be taught to those who most need 
it. The satisfaction that comes from giving instruction, 
however artistically the work may be done, does not com- 
pare with the joy of living with adolescents when one has 



136 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

the ability to control adolescent emotion and to direct 
adolescent will. That is the superlatively fine art of teach- 
ing, the birthright of a few, the despair of the many. 
Nevertheless, few schools can boast of having many 
geniuses on their staffs, and in some way the average 
teacher must be trained to realize the responsibility of 
his position. School organizations of many kinds — 
for social intercourse, mutual benefit, recreation, 
athletics — springing up over night must be directed 
aright or they will surely go wrong. Each boy is a prob- 
lem, each girl an enigma, and yet the well-being of the 
school demands instinctive, prompt, sympathetic, ef- 
fective action on the part of those who stand in loco 
parentis. I mention this, not because our high-school 
teachers are ignorant of their duties or neglectful of their 
opportunities — in my experience they are prodigal to 
a fault of their time and energy when their pupils are in 
need of personal guidance — but because I want to sug- 
gest a way of measuring the efficiency of their action. 
I would apply the same test that I use in other forms of 
school work. Is the fraternal society intelligently self- 
directive? Can the debating club single out a worthy 
topic for discussion, attack it logically, reach sane con- 
clusions and maintain self-control in doing it? Does the 
athletic team stand on its own feet, fight its own battles, 
and win its prizes as men do who struggle honestly for 
the prizes in business? Is the boy who needs correction 
encouraged to face his problem rationally and work out 
his own salvation, or is he told what to do and commanded 
to do it, or worse still, is he made a dependent upon some 
stronger personality? These are questions which every 



TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER I37 

teacher, he who is born as well as he who is made, may 
profitably put to himself. The professional school may 
help him find his way, but only experience under wise 
guidance will bring the answer. 

Proficiency standards in training. — I have a word to 
say to the college professor and the school superintendent. 
The training of high-school teachers is a work in which 
they are both vitally interested and in which they should 
take a part. Unfortunately, neither has as yet seen fit 
to recognize the obligation. The college teacher is prone 
to give his recommendation as soon as the student has 
acquired a smattering of his subject. Colleges should 
know better than to turn loose the average graduate on 
unoffending children. The college department of mathe- 
matics does not consider its graduates engineers, or the 
department of physiology its graduates physicians. Why 
should they think the college student of Latin a fit teacher 
of Latin? And how does the superintendent of schools 
justify himself in putting the novice in teaching, even a 
graduate of our best professional schools, in independent 
charge of a class? When it is known that so much of 
our academic training is faulty and that professional 
training at best is only a preparation for service, how is 
it that no provision is made for a period of probationary 
teaching under competent guidance? I venture to say 
that if our colleges should treat the profession of teaching 
as they do other professions, and if our school system 
should provide adequate apprentice training, we should 
have no excuse to spend a session in discussing the theme 
of this afternoon. The main reason why we talk so much 
on this subject and say so little is that the two dominant 



138 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

influences in shaping the preparation of teachers are in 
league to hinder progress. Let the colleges refuse to 
sanction poor teaching and let the schools make it pos- 
sible for a teacher to perfect his art, and we shall soon 
have teachers who can do professional work. Until that 
time we shall waste our breath in talking, and the crafts- 
men in our schools will head straight for trade-unionism. 
If that is what you want you will surely get it without 
effort. But that is not what you want; you want some- 
thing better. The time is ripe for a change. The public 
is dissatisfied with what is being done. Greater efficiency 
is the watchword of the hour, and with greater efficiency 
go better remuneration and more certain professional 
standing. It is the high privilege of some of us to help 
make a few teachers more worthy of their positions. 
We need cooperation in a task which combines in highest 
degree professional service with patriotic duty. 

The trinity of professional service. — In summary, I 
repeat that the professional training of the high-school 
teacher follows a course of general training which should 
give sound scholarship and breadth of view character- 
istic of the culture such as may be best acquired in a good 
college course. The distinctive professional factors in 
a teacher's training are (i) specialized knowledge of the 
subjects to be taught, including their relations to other 
subjects of the curriculum and their applications to every- 
day life, (2) technical skill in teaching, and (3) the ethical 
aim of education. The perfection of the teacher's equip- 
ment along all these lines is a life work, but the profes- 
sional school may make a beginning by putting the novice 
in the way of understanding what others have done and 



TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER I39 

are doing, and by making him self-critical and self- 
directive with respect to his own work The greatest need 
to-day in the development of professional training for 
high-school teachers is the cooperation of the colleges and 
the schools — of the colleges by way of making suitable 
preparation for professional study, and of the schools by 
way of providing adequate means for giving apprentice 
training under competent guidance. 



CHAPTER VIII 

SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION ^ 

THE finest portrait of the general practitioner, 
drawn in our time, is that of the Scotch doctor 
in Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush.^ "There were 
no speciaHsts in Drumtochty, so this man had to do every- 
thing as best he could, and as quickly. He was chest 
doctor, and doctor for every other organ as well; he was 
accoucheur and surgeon; he was oculist and aurist; he 
was dentist and chloroformist, besides being chemist 
and druggist." For fifty years he rode up and down the 
glen, in fair weather and foul, through snowdrifts and 
flooded fords, to bring consolation and health to the 
sick and suffering in his district. His presence inspired 
confidence — "the verra look o' him wes victory"; "a 
blister for the ootside an' Epsom salts for the inside dis his 
wark, an' they say there's no an herb on the hills he disna 
ken." 

But when the life of Annie Mitchell, Tammas' wife, 
was ebbing slowly away. Dr. MacLure reached the hmit 
of his skill. Then one hour's work of the city specialist 
brought relief to the distracted husband and joy to every 
heart in the glen. No one rejoiced, however, more than 
the old doctor who saw himself eclipsed; while the great 
specialist learned enough in his short visit to enable him 

1 A revised reprint from tlie American Schoolmaster, September, 1913. used by 
courtesy of the publishers. 

* These extracts from Ian Maclaren's Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush are used by special 
arrangement with the publishers, Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc. 

140 



SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION 141 

to measure the country physician at his true worth. At 
the parting the Queen's physician turned to the old doctor, 
rough, gaunt, ill-clothed, scarred by many an accident 
and bowed by the weight of years, — " Give's another 
shake of the hand, MacLure; I'm proud to have met you; 
you are an honor to our profession." 

In another chapter of the same book, a book, by the way, 
that is fit to rank with the best educational classics, 
is a sketch of a great teacher, a general practitioner who 
is also an honor to his profession. " He could detect a 
scholar in the egg, and prophesied Latinity from a boy 
that seemed fit only to be a cowherd. . . He 

had a leaning to classics and the professions, but Domsie 
was catholic in his recognition of 'pairts'. . . . " 
But it was Latin Domsie hunted for as for fine gold, and 
when he found the smack of it in a lad he rejoiced openly. 
He counted it a day in his life when he knew certainly 
that he had hit on another scholar." His triumph came 
when George Howe, one of his own lads of "pairts," 
carried off the medal from the university in both humanity 
and Greek. 

A life of professional service. — The sketch puts master 
and pupil in the foreground. Apparatus and equipment, 
even books and schoolhouse, are barely mentioned. " Per- 
haps one ought to have been ashamed of that school- 
house, but yet it had its own distinction, for scholars 
were bom there, and now and then to this day some 
famous man will come and stand in the deserted play- 
ground for a space." And well he may, for the place is 
hallowed by the associations of a life of devoted service — 
a service that is professional in highest degree. Fortunate, 



142 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

thrice fortunate, is the man who can find in some class- 
room, long since deserted or now echoing to the sound of 
strangers' voices, inducement to meditation and cause 
for thankfulness. And thrice fortunate the teacher 
whose memory compels man to bless him. 

The vogue of specialization. — One hears it said now- 
adays that the general practitioner is passing, that the 
age of specialism has succeeded the happy time when 
everyone knew everything and could do everything that 
was to be done. To a certain extent it may be true, 
but it is not the whole truth. True it is that the special- 
ist flourishes in these times like a green bay tree. He is 
recognized by the mighty and lauded by all the world. 
And by the acid test, I mean by the size of the fees he 
charges, one knows surely that the speciaHst has come 
into his own. If one wants a mountain tunneled, a river 
bridged, or the east and the west joined by a canal, the 
specialist can be found to do it; if one wants a seedless 
orange, drought-resisting alfalfa, or a new breed of corn, 
the specialist can be found to produce it; if one wants to 
rid a city of yellow fever, find a serum for diphtheria, or fit 
up a partially furnished human body with organs discarded 
by their former owners, the specialist can be found to do it. 
Moreover, when we want to find a cure for cancer, to walk 
with seven-leagued boots, or to communicate with Mars, 
we have faith that some day the specialist will be found 
who can do it. We have reached the stage of evolution 
when nothing seems incomprehensible or unattainable. 

A connecting link, — But however overwhelming the 
vogue of the specialist, the days of the general practitioner 
have not passed and they will not pass. Just in propor- 



SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION I43 

tion as the specialist withdraws himself from everyday 
contact with men and affairs, just to that extent is it 
necessary to have mediators between him and those 
through whom he works or for whom his work is done. 
The man who designs the bridge, lays out the tunnel, 
or conceives the canal depends for his success on the fore- 
man and workers on the job. The specialist in horti- 
culture or agronomy may discover the new type, but 
it is the gardener or the farmer who brings the type to 
fruition. The specialist in medicine or surgery finds a 
new way of controlHng disease, but it is the family doctor 
who brings it to our homes or goes with us to the hospital 
when our need outruns his skill. The general practitioner 
is the connecting link between those who can give and 
those who wish to receive. 

Placing the emphasis. — The strength of the specialist 
is in what he knows and can do; his weakness is in his 
narrowness and lack of experience with the forces and 
influences outside his own sphere. The strength of the 
general practitioner is in his knowledge of the world and of 
human nature; his weakness lies in his inabihty to be 
expert in everything at once. The distinction, as I see 
it, is mainly a matter of emphasis, having to do on the 
one hand with the extent of one's work and on the other 
hand with one's attitude towards it. Everybody may 
be a specialist in something and a general practitioner in 
many other things at the same time. Whatever contradic- 
tion exists is due to the contest between high efficiency 
within narrow limits and general abihty in a larger field. 

Specialization in education. — In the field of educa- 
tion we are coming to recognize the existence of specialists. 



144 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Formerly the country teacher was a country teacher; 
the grade teacher a grade teacher; the high-school teacher 
a high-school teacher. Even the college professor enjoyed' 
the distinction of belonging to a type of his own. But 
how rapidly is all this changing. The rural teacher is 
now expected to be expert in agriculture or the household 
arts or in both of them, and in rural economy besides. 
The grade teacher is coming to be known as a primary 
teacher, or a grammar-school teacher, if, happily, she 
escapes being labeled by the exact number of the grade 
to which she is consigned. In the secondary field we no 
longer have the general practitioner, except in schools 
too poor to afiford the specialist in English, or Latin, or 
mathematics. The teacher of science has given way to 
the specialist in physics or chemistry or biology. Nature 
study is breaking up into bits in places where nature is 
viewed in fragments. The college professor has been 
inoculated with the Ph.D. virus and has come out of it 
pockmarked with the German university. In fact, we 
no longer have colleges of the old type, but instead we have 
hybrid institutions — part school, part university. And 
the end is not yet. Experts, real or fancied, are springing 
up everywhere. Experts in supervision and administration, 
experts in school surveys, experts in accounting, experts 
in child study, experts in farm demonstration, experts in 
corn clubs and tomato clubs, experts in everything that 
anybody wants and for which a comfortable salary is 
forthcoming. 

It were easy to poke fun at the popular craze for 
specialization in education, but the situation is far too 
serious to warrant ridicule or justify levity at the expense 



SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION I45 

of either the budding specialist or the educational reformer. 
Within the past ten years we have seen an almost complete 
revolution in public opinion with respect to public educa- 
tion. Few of us are so young as not to recall the time 
when it was professionally dangerous to advocate voca- 
tional training, but to-day it is a sure mark of the old 
fogy to oppose it. The grip of this new idea on the pub- 
lic mind is clearly shown in the enormous sums of money 
now annually voted for public funds for the promotion 
of the practical arts of agriculture, industry, commerce 
and home-making. And in true American fashion mil- 
lions of money are being poured out for these purposes 
before schools have been established or teachers trained 
for the work; or even before it is surely known that 
children can be found to accept the new kind of 
schooling. What matters it, so the pubhc seems to 
think, whether the money be wisely spent; we want 
results, and it is the business of schools and teachers to 
give us what we want. 

Needs in special fields. — The seriousness of the situa- 
tion lies in the fact that we have at present neither the 
teachers nor the means of getting the teachers to do this 
work. For fifty years we have been building up a system 
of normal schools for the training of teachers who may 
be called general practitioners in elementary and second- 
ary education. Now, of a sudden, the call comes for 
speciahsts of infinite variety — teachers of carpentry 
and cabinet-making, of lithography and printing, of 
blacksmithing and molding and founding, of machine 
work and tool cutting, of house decoration and furniture 
design, of agriculture and farm demonstration, of garden- 

TREND IN ED. — 10 



146 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

ing and horticulture, of cooking, dressmaking, millinery 
and laundering, of music and the fine arts, of physical 
training and nursing — only to mention a few of the special 
demands made upon me within a few months. It is 
impossible to satisfy these demands. All of the normal 
schools, departments of education, and special training 
schools in this country together cannot meet the needs of a 
single state. The city of New York alone needs to-day 
more competent teachers in these special fields than all of 
the training schools of the United States will turn out in 
the next few years. 

What will the harvest be? Why, surely this: The city 
of New York, the state of Michigan, and all the other states 
will put teachers to work who will not know their business, 
but who will draw salaries and hold their jobs till a merciful 
Providence disposes of some by death or old age and fills 
their places with better material. Meantime our train- 
ing schools must struggle on with inadequate support, 
trying to make bricks without straw. We know, how- 
ever, from past experience, that the only way to get more 
straw is to turn out our tale of bricks, each one better than 
the last. 

A foundation for citizenship, — This latest innovation 
in public education has come to stay. Make no mistake 
on that score. It is not a passing fancy. It has its roots 
deep down in the economic consciousness of our people. 
It is a phase of the struggle for existence. Our population 
is increasing; our natural resources and our unimproved 
land remain fixed or tend to diminish. Two must some 
day live where one lives now, and then three and four. 
Men live together peaceably when all are well fed, but 



SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION 147 

let some hunger for food and you have trouble. A few 
go hungry now; more will be hungry next year and the 
next. Then look out for more trouble. The present 
trend in education has regard for the time when the man 
who is inefficient will be a disturber of the peace, and the 
demand for a new type of education is the groping of the 
public mind for a solution of this great economic problem. 
It cannot be explained away; it ought not to be disregarded 
by those who see in education something more than 
finger play and the acquisition of skill. Indeed, the time 
is coming when those who cherish the highest ideals of 
education will find the ground swept from under their 
feet, unless they realize that in order to make life worth 
living men must be taught to live decently. The man who 
can do something well will surely take pride in his work, 
as well as get a decent living from it. Pride in one's 
work and the ability to gain a competence from it — these 
are the foundation upon which conservative citizenship 
rests. These are the ends towards which vocational 
iraining strives. 

Trends toward specialization. — The tendency to 
specialization has been strongly marked in our national 
life for more than fifty years. It has developed in response 
to the demand for more efficient service. First felt in 
the field of the mechanical and industrial arts, Morrill 
land grants stimulated the movement during the time of 
national peril in tlie sixties, and from that time to this 
there has been no halt in the evolution of professional 
training. The university has grown out of the college 
purposely, to provide more highly specialized courses 
in the training of experts, and every kind of professional 



148 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

school that I know of has enormously expanded its cur- 
riculum in response to the popular call for more highly- 
trained specialists. Compare the engineering curriculum 
of to-day with the course of study called engineering 
forty years ago. Do the same with the schools of agri- 
culture, of medicine, and of law. Then go over the list of 
new professional schools established in the last twenty 
years — schools of dentistry, ceramics, lithography, print- 
ing, nursing, chiropody; Christian science at one extreme, 
and at the other extreme the great foundations for research 
in the natural sciences, medicine and surgery, endowed 
by a Rockefeller, a Phipps, or a Carnegie. Vocational 
training for the boy or girl who leaves school at fourteen 
years of age and the most specialized research work under 
the Carnegie Foundation are part and parcel of the same 
educational movement. This tendency to specialization 
is the dominant educational characteristic of our time. 

Meeting the demand for educational specialists. — 
Considering the signs of the times, what response should 
our training schools for teachers make? What need have 
we for general practitioners in education? What demand 
is there for specialists? What are the qualifications for 
experts in education and how shall experts be made? 

Until very recently the training schools for teachers 
have been of one type, and that type has been the normal 
school. Until within, say, ten years the university schools 
of education have really been academic institutions, 
and only a few of them have yet grown out of that stage. 
So far as differentiation has taken place, the difference 
between them is that the normal school has emphasized 
training for elementary work and the university school 



SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION I49 

has emphasized the training for secondary work. But, 
as everyone knows, there has been and is still much over- 
lapping. In one respect both are ahke; both are engaged 
in training the novice for whatever work ofifers surest 
employment and brings quickest returns. Most American 
training schools for teachers are engaged in turning out 
general practitioners. 

Training the educational practitioner. — A cursory 
examination of the curricula of training schools of every 
grade discloses a striking similarity in the scope and 
content of the courses offered. First will be noted the 
fundamental courses common to all. These are quite 
generally psychology, and the history and principles of 
education. Next come courses in methodology, which are 
specialized according to the standard subjects of the 
curricula in elementary and secondary schools. Beyond 
this point there is considerable variety, but so far as I 
can find there is no efficient cause for it except the personal 
preferences and institutional idiosyncrasies. Whatever 
difference exists is due more to the age and academic fitness 
of the student-body than to the character of the work that 
individual students will later be called upon to do. 

The status of teachers' training schools to-day is very 
similar to that of medicine, or engineering, or agriculture 
twenty years ago. These technical schools were then 
providing a general curriculum and their graduates were 
general practitioners. Within the period under review, 
however, these schools have not only greatly strengthened 
the scientific content of their fundamental courses, but they 
have added to their offerings a surprising number of 
highly specialized courses,. The result is that while they 



150 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

still train the general practitioner, they give liim a more 
specialized training and also make it possible for a few 
of their best graduates to become expert in some particular 
field. 

The problem of training teachers differs somewhat from 
the problem of training other professional workers. First, 
more teachers are needed, very many more, than workers 
in any other profession. Second, the salaries paid to 
many teachers do not justify a long period of training, or 
permit of rigid academic requirement. Third, teachers 
are generally denied that free and open competition 
which leads to eminence in most other professional lines 
Fourth, teachers are civil servants and are dependent 
upon the will of the public for their tenure of office. These 
facts have to be reckoned with, and they generally operate 
to depress the level of professional service. 

The demand for the educational expert. — But when all 
is said that can be said to excuse stagnation in the training 
of teachers and to justify conservation in the teaching 
profession, the fact remains that there is a growing demand 
for more expert teachers and better equipped educa- 
tional leaders. It is this call for something more and 
something better that we must heed. 

There is no need, I assume, to argue the proposition 
that the state must continue to provide schools for the 
training of the army of teachers, elementary and secondary, 
needed every year to fill the gaps in the ranks. The need 
is so great and the economic pressure so keen that many 
normal schools must be maintained solely for the purpose 
of keeping our educational system from retrogression. 
The duty of such training schools is clear to all. They 



SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION 151 

stand in the breach and must do the best they can with 
the means and material at their command. Until the 
teacher's life is made more agreeable, tenure more secure, 
and remuneration more adequate, many state normal 
schools will be forced to sacrifice professional ideals to 
popular expediency. Some that I know are showing a 
heroism that merits the compliment paid to the old Scotch 
doctor — we are proud to know them; they are an honor 
to our profession. 

The trend of the times is first to provide general prac- 
titioners and then to make a few of the general practitioners 
really expert in a particular field. In education this means 
that a way should be found to single out those fit for special 
service, and that provision be made for giving them special- 
ized training. If the exigencies of the situation force 
ninety-five out of every hundred teachers into routine work, 
it is all the more important that the other five be qualified 
to lead the ninety-five aright. If all cannot be experts, 
the greater the need of some experts. And when I say 
experts, I do not mean solely principals and superin- 
tendents and supervisors. The influence of one superior 
teacher of Latin, or geography, or mathematics can be 
made to pervade a whole city system. The person who 
knows and can do, is the expert, whether he be in surgery, 
criminal law, or animal husbandry, or in teaching reading 
in the first grade, mathematics in the high school, or phi- 
losophy in the college. The time is coming when expert- 
ness will be as highly prized in the teachers as in the 
administrative ofiicer, and I am confident that some 
schools some day will find a substantial way of recognizing 
superior merit, however it may be shown. 



152 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Equipping the expert. — The obviously correct pro- 
cedure in making educational experts is first to make 
good general practitioners — teachers who have some- 
thing to teach and know how to teach it; teachers well 
grounded in academic subjects who have acquired by 
training and reflection an all-round view of educational 
aims and values, and who have learned by practical ex- 
perience how best to give professional service. The next 
step is to provide the general practitioner with a body of 
specialized knowledge and equip him with superior skill 
in some particular line of work. Knowledge and skill 
focused on a particular problem are the chief factors in 
the solution of the problem. 

Great as is our need for properly equipped teachers, 
there is little prospect of our getting many of them. So, 
too, our ideals of training educational experts will not 
soon be realized. Just as we are forced to compromise 
with the public in the training of the novice, so are our 
efforts to make good specialists likely to prove abortive. 
Nevertheless, the work must go on. Here and there 
an institution will be justified in devoting its whole strength 
to specialized instruction, and it may well be that every 
teachers' training school can perform some part of the 
task. The task itself is to find out what to do and how 
to do it. It is a task of heroic proportions — one that 
dwarfs every other educational problem of our time. 

Responsibilities of educational institutions. — The in- 
stitution which dedicates itself to specialism in education 
assumes a grave responsibility. In so far as it is successful 
its graduates will lead in educational thought and practice 
and exercise a dominant influence in shaping educational 



SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION 1 53 

affairs. The danger is that we may send out blind teachers 
of the blind. 

Sound learning as an asset. — My experience in an 
institution which has been specializing in education as long 
as any other, leads me to the conclusion that a teachers' 
college cannot neglect a few very definite rules of procedure. 
They are so obvious to me as to seem axiomatic. First, 
a teachers' college, while a professional school and working 
solely towards professional ends, should prize sound learn- 
ing as its principal asset. The chief hindrance to good 
teaching is lack of knowledge, academic and professional. 
The greatest obstacle in the way of professional advance- 
ment to-day is the ignorance of those charged with educa- 
tional leadership in school and in public life. So long as 
we don't know scientifically what should be done or how 
to do it ^ know it in such a way that any rational being 
who takes the trouble to examine the proofs will be 
convinced — so long will the conduct of school affairs 
be a matter of opinion. And where opinion prevails the 
ward politician will always win. Our first duty then, 
as I see it, is to encourage research and investigation in 
every line of school work. In some departments it means a 
specially selected body of academic knowledge, as, for 
example, that which a teacher of high-school mathematics 
should know; in other departments it means scientific 
research into the psychologic foundations of the learning 
process; and again it means such a knowledge of municipal 
administration as to make of school management a science 
as well as an art. The great object is to bring under 
scientific control the traditional arts of school-keeping 
and school-teaching. 



154 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Knowledge for professional ends. — The second axiom 
is that a teachers' college should use knowledge for pro- 
fessional ends. A university department of education 
might conceivably pursue research and investigation 
regardless of its outcome, but a professional school for the 
training of educational experts cannot afford to neglect 
the practical application of approved facts. A teachers' 
college, in other words, must be a school of both pure and 
applied science. I have little faith in the ability of any 
one to draw the line between the two aspects of higher 
study, but if it can be done, then the teachers' college must 
be found in the field of applied science. Our success 
depends upon our ability to use correctly the knowledge 
of facts and processes concerned in education. Our work, 
therefore, has a twofold aspect — first, the pursuit of 
knowledge that will stand the test, and, second, learning 
how to use such knowledge skillfully for the benefit of 
society. 

Cutting academic red tape. — A third axiom relates to 
the conditions under which we work. A teachers' college 
must be free to pursue its work without overmuch regard to 
academic traditions. While some sort of connection 
with a university is highly desirable, both for the sake of 
the inspiration gained from workers in other fields, and the 
contributions that come from those not directly concerned 
in our work, there is danger, nevertheless, that too close a 
union may stifle the life of the young professional school 
with the windings of academic red tape. A teachers' 
college, if it deserves to exist as something apart from a 
collegiate course, must, like a university department, and 
every other professional school, be given freedom to develop 



SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION 1 55 

its field. The spirit of its work, its esprit de corps, and its 
mode of giving instruction must develop normally and 
naturally according to its needs. This can't be done 
if some extraneous power decides ex cathedra that certain 
lines of work, generally those nearest akin to those already 
in existence, are worthy of university recognition, and 
certain other lines to which they are strangers are unworthy 
of recognition. In a teachers' college the methods of 
teaching spelling, or memorizing a Latin declension, 
or cooking a beefsteak are as worthy of attention as a 
study of the principles of causation, the doctrine of evolu- 
tion, or the history of coeducation. No one doubts 
that the expert surgeon does right in giving attention to 
methods of tying an artery and bandaging a wound. It 
takes time to learn the necessary details in professional 
practice, and a professional school is fully justified in 
giving the time and allowing credit for it. I mention 
this desideratum, seemingly so self-evident, because 
I have found it the chief stumbKngblock in university 
circles. I would go further and say that the ordinary 
system of counting courses of instruction by the number 
of hours per week, or the number of weeks per year, 
should be abandoned in a teachers' college, or at least 
be modified in such a way as to permit of a combination 
of courses of variable length given by several instructors. 
Academic tradition assigns to a given faculty of a univer- 
sity certain functions, and credits only that instruction 
which members of the faculty may give. A teachers' 
college should be free to supplement the instruction of 
its own staff with the services of experts drawn from a 
wide circle, and it should not hesitate to send its students 



156 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

into the field for study and instruction under recognized 
leaders who cannot bring their work to the college. We 
need something akin to the clinic and hospital service 
of the medical school. When academic tradition inter- 
feres with professional needs, away with red tape. When 
something can be learned from an expert in a few hours, 
why refuse to call in the expert or tie it up with a dozen 
other things in order to make out a two-hour course for 
a semester? A teachers' college supported by the state 
should have all the educational resources of the state at 
its command. Its students should be welcome in any 
schoolroom and have access to all the information pos- 
sessed by any principal or superintendent of schools. 
Its invitation to any teacher in the state to share instruc- 
tion for an hour or a week should be deemed both a profes- 
sional honor and a patriotic duty. To one accustomed 
to the limitations placed upon a private institution, the 
opportunities open to such a state institution as this seem 
boundless. 



CHAPTER IX 

COEDUCATION IN HIGH SCHOOLS ^ 

"/COEDUCATION is a failure: The Horace Mann 

1, J School decides to abandon it." 

This startling headline in a New York daily 
paper prefaced the announcement of a change in policy 
with respect to our college schools. The fact is that 
after twenty-five years of coeducation we tried the experi- 
ment of separating the sexes during the last six of the 
twelve years' course. The kindergarten and first six 
grades of the elementary school wiU remain coeducational. 
Beginning with the seventh grade, the boys go to a school 
at 246th Street, six miles distant, and the girls remain 
in the present building at 120th Street. The boys' school 
has a playground of four acres fitted for their use in all 
kinds of weather. The girls have the fine gymnasium 
and swimming-pool formerly shared with the boys. 
Material equipment, therefore, is about equalized. The 
special feature of the boys' school is its outdoor life — 
a country school for boys; the special advantages of the 
girls' school will be its facilities for teaching the house- 
hold arts, fine arts, and music. 

Is coeducation a failure? — If a country school is good 
for city boys, why not for city girls? Can't the house- 
hold arts and other technical subjects be taught as well 
in one place as in another? Why separate the boys and 

I A revised reprint from Good Housekeeping, October, 1913. used by courtesy of 
the publishers. 

157 



158 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

girls — unless, perchance, you think coeducation a failure? 
A matter of expediency. — Those who believe that 
coeducation is a failure will not be changed by any ex- 
planation that I can give, but I insist that our action has 
no bearing whatever on the main question. We have 
done only what every good school and every wise com- 
munity would do under similar conditions. When the 
present school building was erected it was surrounded 
by vacant blocks. Playgrounds were easily accessible. 
Now the city hems us in. Moreover, the school was 
much smaller than now. School life was simpler, and no 
such demand was made upon us for the technical training 
of girls as has come everywhere within the past ten years. 
Our policy is to keep the school to the front and make it 
in every way as good as we know how. Our present 
building and equipment represent an investment of up- 
ward of $500,000. It is too valuable to abandon, but 
it can be made into an ideal school for girls. For three 
years the boys have been going afternoons in good weather 
to the playground at 246th Street. The time spent 
on the trains — twenty-five minutes each way — is a 
considerable loss, and in order to get in an hour or two in 
daylight the school has had to close at two o'clock. Under 
the new plan the boys will spend the day at the country 
school, and get their lessons and sports whenever each can 
be done best. The separation will give ample room for 
both schools, simplify the program, and make possible a 
more complete curriculum for each. These are the con- 
siderations which led us to change a policy of twenty-five 
years' standing. They are all matters of expediency, 
and say nothing of the success or failure of coeducation. 



COEDUCATION IN HIGH SCHOOLS 1 59 

What is coeducation? — My explanation is intended 
merely to show that our action was not the result of 
profound conviction of the right or wrong of coeducation, 
and most certainly it was not forced by any dissatisfaction 
with a school of both sexes, nor any inability to accomplish 
what the school set out to do when it was established. 
No breath of scandal has ever touched it, and from first to 
last it has been a big happy family. 

I assume that what prompts a discussion of coedu- 
cation in the high school is the knowledge that the prob- 
lem which confronts us also confronts many other schools. 
Our experience is not isolated. Communities which have 
maintained coeducational high schools for a generation 
are now raising the question for the first time whether 
or not it is best to do as they have been doing. Questions 
which many of us thought settled years ago are coming 
up to vex us. In the light of recent development in 
secondary education, how shall they be answered? 

The first step is to get a clear understanding of what 
is meant by coeducation. In the minds of some it appar- 
ently means that girls should have identically the same 
schooling as boys. Such a conception may have been 
justified at a time when it was claimed that girls' intellects 
were inferior to boys', that a woman should not aspire 
to do a man's work anywhere — least of all in school 
and college. But no one who has taught boys and girls 
together can make that argument and keep a straight face. 
It is no longer necessary to put boys and girls together in 
school or college simply to demonstrate that girls are not 
the inferiors of their brothers. 

Equipment and efficiency. — When coeducation is un- 



l6o THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

derstood to mean identical education for all, the problem 
is reduced to its lowest terms, and becomes an ab- 
surdity. It is long since any one has seriously advocated 
a curriculum so narrow and impoverished as to be accept- 
able to all. Even in schools where all must take the same 
lessons and submit to the same instruction, it does not 
follow that all pupils get the same mental pabulum. 
No two pupils get the same reaction, mental or spiritual, 
from any school exercise. One boy may pick his way 
laboriously through Caesar's Commentaries and retain 
just enough to earn a passing mark at the end of the term ; 
another, apparently doing the same task, may be leading 
an imaginary Roman legion in a conquest of the world. 
The one is working for a diploma; the other is getting an 
education. 

Meeting the pupil's needs. — The pedagogical advance 
in recent years has been directed primarily toward better 
teaching. There has been great material betterment, 
to be sure, but fine buildings and improved equipment 
are worth while only as means of helping the teacher 
to do more inspiring work. In methods of instruction 
our teachers are trained to depend less upon the grind 
and discipline of school-keeping, and more upon teaching 
in such a way as to secure a wholesome respect for the 
subject of instruction and, if possible, an abiding interest 
in it. It is well known that most boys and girls have 
their likes and dishkes in school subjects. Time was when 
a schoolboy's soul was saved by the mortification of the 
flesh. In some places, where the school is too poor to 
afiford a variety, the puritanic argument is still heard, 
but I do not know of any school that has grown from, say, 



COEDUCATION IN HIGH SCHOOLS l6l 

fifty to five hundred pupils which has not increased its 
curriculum in almost equal ratio. When a school has only 
two teachers the subjects taught are naturally those 
which two teachers can best teach; when the third teacher 
comes in a few new subjects enter, and the curriculum 
becomes more flexible; when the tenth, or twentieth, or 
fiftieth teacher is added, less is said of what the pupil 
needs and more of what he wants. Apparently the pupil 
needs what he can get when he can get but httle; when 
much is offered his wants determine his needs. 

Equal opportunity. — The bane of education is that 
plausible arguments can be put up to justify any end 
however unworthy it may be. Identical education was 
justified so long as it cost less to give a narrow curriculum 
than a broad one. When it costs no more to give a variety 
of subjects, the argument changes. Then we argue that 
there should be equality of opportunity — opportunity 
for each boy and each girl to get in school the training 
which will best fit them for the work of life. So far have 
we gone in this latest stage that vocational training is 
being introduced everywhere. The rural schools are 
teaching agriculture and the household arts. By con- 
tinuation schools, night schools, and special trade schools, 
both boys and girls in our cities are being fitted to earn 
a better living. Once grant that equality of opportunity 
has a place in school policy, and no state dare provide 
high schools, colleges, and professional schools for the 
few, without making provision for the vocational train- 
ing of the many. 

Meeting the need for diflferentiation. — The doctrine of 
equality of opportunity is playing havoc with many of 

TREND IN ED. — II 



1 62 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

our earlier American notions of education. Our first 
secondary schools were really college-preparatory schools, 
and our colleges were a step toward professional training 
for the service of church and state. They were aristocratic 
institutions, for the benefit of the few who could afford 
to take advantage of them. When high schools came in, 
maintained at public expense, the common sense of the 
community insisted on opening these schools to girls. 
The public that paid the bills was as much interested in 
one sex as in the other, and thereby coeducation became 
the rule in American high schools. But, unwittingly, 
in admitting girls the seeds of heterodoxy were sown. 
The admission of girls doubled the possible number of 
pupils at once, and with the growth of numbers more 
teachers were necessary. With more teachers, greater 
flexibility of curriculum was inevitable. The next step 
is the one we are all facing. When it is possible to provide 
schooling adapted to the needs of later life, what differen- 
tiation, if any, shall be made for boys and girls? 

Vocational training. — The fact that eighty per cent of 
the girls in any high school will marry within a few years 
and be settled in homes, and that the only specific train- 
ing they will ever get for their life work must be had in 
the high school, suggests the desirabihty of giving girls 
something more than the boys want. So strong has this 
feeling become that few high schools to-day omit the house- 
hold arts from their curriculum. If it be granted that 
differentiation is desirable in one respect, it is difficult to 
refute the argument that it also may be desirable in other 
respects. I fancy that the movement, begun with the 
introduction of the household arts, will continue until 



COEDUCATION IN HIGH SCHOOLS 1 63 

the high-school training for girls who do not go to college 
will be sharply set off from the college-preparatory course. 
Moreover, the colleges will not long refuse to credit for 
admission the courses pursued by most girls in high schools; 
the state universities cannot do it if they would, and the 
women's colleges will finally fall in line. Consequently I 
predict a growing tendency to differentiate the work 
of boys and girls in our high schools. 

But all this may be beside the mark. It does not answer 
the question whether boys and girls should be educated 
together in the high school. Coeducation, if it means 
identical education, seems to me an absurdity. Coeduca- 
tion as equality of opportunity for both sexes, and for all 
individuals, will be settled chiefly by considerations of 
expediency. 

A normal school life. — Judging from what I know of 
boys' schools and girls' schools and schools for both sexes, 
I am satisfied that boys and girls can live together in schools 
as naturally and helpfully as they do in the homes from 
which they come. I doubt whether a boys' school is any 
safer for a normal boy, or a girls' school for a normal 
girl, than is a mixed school. Some boys, perhaps, and 
some girls would be better off in separate institutions, 
but in most communities there is no cause to fear any 
worse outcome from a mixed school than would proba- 
bly arise if the sexes were separated. This is a hard 
proposition for a foreigner to understand, but to most 
Americans it is axiomatic. With us, school life with boys 
and girls is as normal and as safe as home life. More- 
over, there are many refining influences present in a mixed 
school which are distinctly helpful to boys, and, so far as 



164 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

my observation goes, the girls lose nothing by being looked 
to as guardians of the social life of the group. Respon- 
sibility builds character, and in a mixed school each sex 
is charged with the responsibility of maintaining its own 
social status. This I consider a positive advantage, and 
one that should not lightly be set aside. 

The school as a replica of community life. — School 
life in an American high school is the life of the community 
in miniature. If the community life is sound and healthy, 
the life of the school should be sound and healthy, too. 
When public opinion is weak or uncertain, however, there 
is a danger that the mixed school may suffer. Hence 
it is that the high school in one community may be easily 
managed and a model of propriety, while not far away 
another school may fall far short of the ideal. In a great 
city, for example, where pupils come from all classes and 
where the parents are fiat-dwellers, knowing nothing 
of those who live on the other side of the partition, a con- 
trolling public opinion is out of the question. Pupils 
know each other only in school, and the gossip of the 
school does not penetrate the homes, because those at 
home do not know John or Sarah toward whom gossip is 
directed. Under such conditions the school is hampered 
by lack of restraining public opinion. It is natural, there- 
fore, that parents should hesitate to send a daughter 
into a group of which they know little, but fear much. 
Such a situation invites opposition to coeducation, and 
the opposition naturally comes from the patrons of the 
school. 

Physiological maturity. — The strongest argument for 
the separation of the sexes during the high-school age 



COEDUCATION IN HIGH SCHOOLS 1 65 

comes from the difference in physiologic age. Girls mature 
earlier than boys. Girls of fifteen are a year or two ahead 
of boys of the same age, and the boys never catch up 
during the high-school period. The inferiority of the boys, 
socially and mentally, is noticeable in any high-school 
class. I speak, of course, in general terms. In every 
school some boy will be physiologically older and intel- 
lectually more alert than some girls, but in the large, 
the girls outstrip the boys. The result is a certain stagna- 
tion of the boy group, due in part to immaturity, and in 
part to the repeated failure to excel. When a boy gives 
up trying because some girl always wins, he soon acquires 
the habit of being satisfied to stay behind. It is a common 
saying among high-school teachers that girls learn more, 
but boys think better. But the boy who becomes ac- 
customed to second place soon fails to think at his best. 
He marks time, and frequently does not wake up till he 
finds himself in college in an entirely different atmosphere, 
dealing with new subjects in open competition with his 
fellows. 

Degrees of sensitivity. — Some boys, a relatively 
large number, I fear, should be pushed harder in high 
school than is commonly the case with mixed classes. 
A hand heavy enough to be felt by boys of sixteen may 
be too heavy for the girls of the same class. The relatively 
greater sensitiveness of girls may be disputed, but I think 
most teachers will agree that girls are prone to take school 
work more seriously than boys. 

Collegiate coeducation. — Whatever the value of the 
argument for a separation of the sexes during the high- 
school period, it does not hold good for either the earher 



1 66 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

or later educational stages. I cannot see any inherent 
differences in college men and women, and I fancy no one 
finds them in the elementary school. Some women 
whom I know are physically stronger, intellectually 
keener, and spiritually more robust than some men of my 
acquaintance. I doubt whether there is any profession, 
or even manual vocation, that might not be better served 
by certain women than by many men. On the other hand, 
there are men who are essentially more feminine than some 
women; even the maternal instinct is better developed 
in some men than in many women. Our environment 
and occupation, quite as much as any inherited tendency 
or physical limitation, mold us into the shapes we take. 

Equality of opportunity for similarity of aims. — The 
doctrine of equality of opportunity — a fundamental 
principle of American society, it seems to me — forces 
us to the conclusion that our school system must provide 
free and ample training for every boy and girl. If a boy 
and a girl aspire to professional service, there should be 
full equahty of opportunity; so, too, if either wants to 
become a farmer, a builder, or a stenographer, the way 
should be open and the means available. 

The obvious corollary of this proposition is that those 
whose aim is the same should have the same education. 
The woman who studies medicine, or teaching, or law, 
needs no specialized course of training because she is a 
woman. Professional service is without distinction of 
sex. Merchandizing, stenography — even laundering and 
dressmaking and dishwashing — are not peculiarly femi- 
nine occupations. The man who wishes to excel in them 
must fit himself as does the woman. 



COEDUCATION IN HIGH SCHOOLS 1 67 

Opening the door to future needs. — I see no reason, 
therefore, to modify a college-preparatory course to suit 
the needs of girls or boys; their needs are identical, so far 
as they go. The fact that two thirds of the girls will soon 
marry means that the career of the largest group in the 
school is definitely known; for them a specialized course 
is not only desirable, but it is almost criminal not to give 
it. But if any girl prefers Latin to cookery, and aspires to 
become a classical scholar rather than a domestic tech- 
nician, I think she is entitled to all the help the school can 
give, and that what she gets should be what the boy with 
the same ambition gets. There is a study of science that 
leads to a sane understanding of the principles of nutrition 
and sanitation as required by the housewife, and there 
is a study of science that leads to the practice of medicine. 
The girl who is to marry should choose the one, and the 
girl who is to become a physician should take the other. 
It would doubtless strengthen the future housewife to 
take both, just as it would be well for the married phy- 
sician to have both, but life is too short to do everything 
that one would like, or to get all the training that one 
should have. Choices must be made, and fortunate is 
the man or woman who chooses wisely. All that the 
school can do is to offer the widest possible range of choices, 
and to keep the door open toward future needs. 



CHAPTER X 

THE VITAL THINGS IN EDUCATION ^ 

SOME time ago I was asked to address a convention 
on the subject, " What are the vital things in the 
education of young women?" The topic was not 
of my choosing, but the question interested me. It 
should interest everyone, either teacher or parent. From 
the parent's standpoint it is oftentimes a very proper 
question to put. What have courses of study and methods 
of teaching to do with things that are vital in education? 
Where are the ablative absolute, the rule of three, and 
quadratic equations in such a scheme? Is there anything 
of more consequence than the ability to parse " Paradise 
Lost," to spell Nebuchadnezzar, or to work every example 
in partial payments (every one, I mean, that the textbook 
gives — no one ever saw the like outside a textbook) ? 
To ask a pedagogue what is vital in education is a shrewd 
way of finding out whether he belongs to the union or not. 
Nevertheless, I told them plainly what I thought of the 
education of girls. 

Problem of coeducation. — Since then I have been 
thinking of what is vital in the education of boys. And 
I really cannot see where to draw the line. We want our 
girls to become women — the best possible women ; and 
we want our boys to become men — the best possible 

'A revised reprint from Good Housekeeping, March, 1914, used by courtesy of the 
publishers. 

168 



THE VITAL THINGS IN EDUCATION 1 69 

men. The sexes may differ in important particulars, 
just as individuals of the same sex have pecuHar char- 
acteristics ; , but what is essential in education pertains to 
all alike. 

The other day I received a letter from the president of a 
city school board in England who wanted to know what I 
thought of coeducation. My reply was that I didn't 
think much about it; if he meant the presence of both 
sexes in the same school, I could see no harm in it as 
long as parents suppHed us with both boys and girls; if he 
meant the same training for both sexes, he would have 
to seek further for his information, because in this country 
no two boys have the same training, to say nothing of the 
identical training of both sexes. 

The attainment of ends. — Herein is an educational 
principle of wider appHcation than we ofttimes realize. 
If it is hard to find two people who look alike, it is harder 
still to find two personalities who are alike. By inherit- 
ance, temperament, and taste I am unlike any other 
being, so far as I know, and no conceivable discipline 
that I could be subjected to would make me just like 
anyone else. Browning says in his " Paracelsus " that 

Truth is within ourselves . . . 
and, to know, 
Rather consists in opening out a way 
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, 
Than in effecting entry for a Ught 
Supposed to be without. 

What is essential in education is not so much a matter 
of disciphne and training as it is a question of ends to be 



lyo THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

attained. For every mountain peak worth scaling there 
may be innumerable paths that lead to the summit. For 
every boy or girl worth raising there may be many routes 
to success in life. But a person's attainment of success 
should be as patent as standing on the mountain peak. 

Where education begins. — Knowing what we want 
our children to become, the practical question is: What 
should we do for them while they are growing into manhood 
and womanhood? It is a question directed to parents 
as well as to teachers — I myself am speaking as a parent. 
What counts most in the making of men and women? 
If we parents were free to act in the best interests of our 
children ; if schools did not have fixed schedules and classes 
and courses of study and marks and examinations and 
prizes and promotions and graduations and bouquets; 
if teachers were all- wise and omnipotent; if our friends 
and neighbors would only let us do some things that they 
don't care to do, instead of forever goading us on to do as 
others do; if only we had the courage to do what our com- 
mon sense dictates — what would we do with our children 
while they are growing into men and women? 

Laying a sound foundation. — Shall we send them to 
college? I fancy some of us put that question to the babe 
in the cradle. At any rate, I know of parents who enter 
their boys in a famous New England school as soon as 
their names are decided upon. Unfortunately, or for- 
tunately, I don't know which, the schooling of girls is not 
taken quite so seriously. But nevertheless we do begin 
to think very early of the schools to which our daughters 
are to be sent. We begin inquiries concerning dancing 
masters and music teachers; we discuss the relative values 



THE VITAL THINGS IN EDUCATION 171 

of classical and modern languages; we are very insistent 
on good spelling and a proper pronunciation; all these 
are matters within our own control. But the baby's 
food, the air she breathes, and the water she drinks, these 
are mysteries known only to nurses, physicians, and 
grandmothers, just as the bacteria and bacilli are dis- 
pensations of Divine Providence. So long as the baby is 
contented and happy and lets us sleep o' nights, what 
difference does it make whether or not her diet contains 
the proper proportions of fats, proteids, and carbohydrates? 
Carbohydrates are starch, and starch becomes sugar 
in digestion; what harm, then, can sweets do? The only 
trouble with this argument is that most of us parents do 
not even know enough of chemistry to use the terms 
properly, to say nothing of making the right food com- 
binations. Like politicians who are willing to overlook 
a little matter of constitutional law among friends, so we 
are quite willing to neglect the nutrition of our children 
in the home. No greater shock ever came to me than 
when I once called a physician to diagnose the illness 
of one of my children and was told very bluntly that v/hat 
primarily ailed the child was lack of food. I am satisfied 
that the major part of our bodily ills is due to the bad 
start made in the nursery. With proper nutrition and 
plenty of sunshine and out-of-door exercise, resistance 
to disease is at its maximum, and the conditions are 
right for the development of a sound mind in a sound 
body. 

The prime essential. — The first question, therefore, 
is not as to what college we shall send the child to, but 
What shall we give it to eat? If higher education is con- 



172 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

cerned at all, the question should be, What college or 
course of study should the parents enter? 

When you ask me what counts most in education, I 
have no hesitation in putting to the front good health. 
I cannot think of anything worth attaining in life for 
man or woman that will not be worth more, that will not 
give more joy, satisfaction, and zest to life, if good physical 
health accompanies it. " What shall a man give in ex- 
change for his soul? " He has nothing to give that is 
worth taking if his digestion is ruined, his nerves shattered, 
or his brain unbalanced. 

Health - instruction for parents. — The responsibility 
for good health does not rest primarily with the school. 
It is the duty of the teachers, of course, to observe hygienic 
laws, and not to ask more of a pupil than can reasonably 
be expected, but what is usually called " overburdening " 
of the pupil is really underfeeding and malnutrition. 
The schools have sins enough of their own to atone for 
without adding those that are committed by the ignorant 
but well-meaning parent. The pathetic part of it all is 
that the mischief is done before the school has a chance 
to try its hand. Only one recourse is left to the school 
and to the intelligent parent, namely, to instruct the boy 
and girl, who will some day have children of their own, 
how to save their children from those faults from which 
they themselves have suffered. "Is it not an aston- 
ishing fact," Herbert Spencer asks, " that though on the 
treatment of our offspring depend their life and death, 
their moral welfare or their ruin, yet not one word of 
instruction is ever given to those who will hereafter be- 
come parents? " 



THE VITAL THINGS IN EDUCATION 1 73 

I do not know how long we shall wait for such instruc- 
tion, but the time is coming when it will be given. If 
it is incompatible with college education, then college 
education will have to give way to something more rational. 
If a boy cannot be taught how best to use his own body, 
there is something lacking either in the boy or in his 
teacher. If the principles of reproduction and heredity, 
of physiology and hygiene, of food selection and prepara- 
tion, cannot be given properly in a secondary school to 
girls who will soon be in need of such information, then 
there is something radically wrong with those schools, 
or with our modern notions of what is worth teaching. 

Pledges unfulfilled. — The greatest peril of our educa- 
tion to-day is that it promises an open door to every boy 
and girl up to the age of fourteen, and then turns them 
ruthlessly into the world to find most doors not only 
closed but locked against them. Throughout this country 
we are telling thousands — yes, milhons — of boys and 
girls that anything they please may be had for the asking, 
and during the six or eight years of the school course they 
are instructed that nothing is beyond attainment. Then, 
too, our democratic notion of equahty of opportunity is 
responsible for the attempt to hitch some very ordinary 
wagons to stars of the first magnitude. The result can 
only be bitter disappointment. Instead of a happy, 
contented, and able farmer, we make of the ambitious 
country boy a clerk or helper in some city industry, or a 
cog in some factory wheel. Instead of helping the quick- 
witted city boy, who leaves school at twelve or fourteen, 
wise far beyond his years, to employ his mental strength 
in shortening the term of apprenticeship in the trades 



174 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

and in improving the quality of the output, we turn him 
over to the tender mercies of the trade union, or allow 
him to bungle ahead in his efforts to become a capable 
workman. What wonder that our skilled craftsmen are 
foreigners, and that our best American boys become 
petty poHticians or v/alking delegates or seekers after the 
soft places? We do not teach them to do the day's work 
in such a way as to find pleasure and satisfaction in it. 
The result is grumbling and faultfinding and discontent 
in private life, and in civil life the beginnings of social- 
ism and anarchism. 

Morals and manners. — Think of what it means to our 
girls to enjoy for eight or ten years daydreams which 
the first contact with life shatters. Is it any wonder that 
the girl of eighteen or twenty who has never had an hour's 
instruction in the scientific and aesthetic interpretation of 
those duties which confront her should find no pleasure 
in home-making? The situation is bad enough in the 
country, but it is infinitely worse in our great cities. What 
chance has the girl of the tenements even though she be 
well-schooled and quick-witted? She leaves the school 
at fourteen or fifteen to get her postgraduate training 
in housekeeping from her mother. Think of what that 
means. A home of two or three or four rooms in a crowded 
quarter; every member of the family at work or seeking it; 
living confined to the barest necessities; no conveniences 
for doing the ordinary work of a home, even if that were 
necessary. What is left to the girl? The street; and it is 
not remarkable that some thoughtful persons should hold 
our pubHc schools responsible for adding to the danger 
of city life for bright and attractive girls. The surest 



THE VITAL THINGS IN EDUCATION 1 75 

way to break down family life and destroy the sanctity 
of the marriage tie is to mate an ignorant man with an 
ignorant woman — ignorant, I mean, of what marriage 
means, and unfitted to meet its obligations. 

Effective social participation. — The next desideratum 
is proper manners and morals; in a word, suitable habits. 
I am not sure that there is any hierarchy in these prac- 
tical ideals. Good health was put first because without 
it all else is worthless; proper manners and morals next, 
because without some such norm there can be no effective 
participation in social life. 

It is a commonplace that a man must be honest, and 
that a woman must bear a good reputation. We go even 
further and say that the great object of education is the 
development of good character; but we do not always 
include in that the whole round of conduct which marks 
the agreeable member of society. 

The true aim of education. — We are not concerned here 
with the origin or inculcation of customs or conduct. 
It matters little whether they come from mere imitation, 
or result from definite instruction reinforced by persistent 
effort. It is what we do that counts most in society. 
And every grade of society demands that its members 
conform to an accepted norm. We recognize this insist- 
ent demand when we require our children to eat with a 
fork, to dress becomingly, and to speak grammatically. 
Reverence, courtesy, gentleness, sympathy, modesty, 
obedience, bravery, when socially considered, are virtues 
crystallized in good maimers and morals. They are the 
surest evidence of what we call good breeding. More- 
over, from the social standpoint these virtues have a value 



176 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

directly proportional to their habitual expression. 
Veracity as a fixed habit is far preferable to truth-telling 
for a consideration. Temperance induced by fear of evil 
consequences is far less effective than instinctive self- 
restraint. When these desirable modes of conduct become 
thoroughly ingrained — become " natural " as we often 
say — then character is fixed. " Manners makeyth man " 
is an adage of greater truth than is commonly recognized 
in our modern educational practice. 

The joy of fellowship. — How to get on with other 
people — for that is really the criterion of proper manners 
and morals — is the chief end of one great type of educa- 
tion. The Persians, according to Xenophon, insisted 
that their leaders should learn both to rule and to be 
ruled, to command and to obey. These ends are not 
secured by formal instruction; they are the result of dis- 
cipline under conditions which are favorable to the fixing 
of habits. Education, Professor James says, is the or- 
ganization of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies of 
behavior. Walt Whitman, in one of those strange out- 
bursts of his, tells how it is that the child goes forth every 
day into a new world and becomes part and parcel of all 
that he beholds. 

There was a child went forth every day; 

And the first object he looked upon, that object he became; 

And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part 

of the day, or for many years or stretching cycles of years. 
The early lilacs became part of this child. 
And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red 

clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird . . . 
And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school, 
And the friendly boys that pass'd — and the quarrelsome boys. 



THE VITAL THINGS EN EDUCATION 177 

And the tidy and frtsh-cheek'd girls — and the barefoot negro boy 

and girl, 
And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went. 
His own parents, . . . 

The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table; 
The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a whole- 
some odor falling off Jier person and clothes as she walks by; 
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust; 
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure, 
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, 

the yearning and swelling heart, 
Affection that will not be gainsay'd, the sense of what is real, 

the thought if after all it should prove unreal. 
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious 

whether and how, 
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and 

specks? . . . 
These became part of that child who went forth eviery day, and 

who now goes, and will always go forth every day.^ 

A very serviceable education can be given with a modi- 
cum of formal instruction. In fact, we seldom hear a 
course of study justified because of the information it 
gives. It may be well that some of these courses put 
forth no such claim, but the truth is that much of what 
we claim for study may be gained — and is gained by far 
the greatest number in any society — from leading a 
wholesome life with one's fellows. English education, 
as given in the great public schools, is preeminently of 
this type. 

The day's work. — The next vital thing in the education 
of anybody, man or woman, is the ability to engage in 
useful occupation. I had almost said the ability to earn 

1 This selection from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is used by special ar- 
rangement with the publishers, Doubleday, Page and Company. 

TREND IN ED. — 12 



178 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

a livelihood, but someone may object to the utilitarian 
limitation of that statement. Let me put in the word 
decent — the abiHty to earn a decent livelihood — and 
I am as satisfied with the one expression as with the 
other. We do want both our boys and our girls to succeed 
in doing something worth while and suited to them. We 
also want them to have sufficient ability in some useful 
occupation to gain a living thereby in case of need. 

Now I wish to emphasize this demand. We do want 
just this thing — all of us — regardless of our social 
standing, or our wealth, or any other consideration. If 
sometimes we fail to talk out loud about it, the reason is that 
we are willing to take chances on the future, to run the risk 
of leaving to someone else the duty of instructing our 
children in doing the day's work when the need of the day's 
work arises. 

I have said that this categorical imperative is directed 
to girls as well as to boys. The woman who has nothing 
to do in life may be left out of account. And if there be 
work for woman to do, her pleasure and satisfaction in 
life, her influence upon others, and her returns for her 
labor, all demand that she be fitted for her task. I am 
not thinking only of so-called " working- women," nor of 
professional women, nor of any particular class of those 
who work for money. If anyone thinks that getting 
married relieves a woman of work and responsibihty, 
let him try it and see for himself. If there is any occupa- 
tion that induces greater physical strain and nervous 
waste, any profession that calls for more of the moral 
virtues, or profits more from the use of common sense, 
than the profession of wife and mother, I should like 



THE VITAL THINGS IN EDUCATION 1 79 

to know what it is. It is not a money-making profession; 
it is, on the contrary, preeminently the money-spending 
profession. 

Earning and spending. — In my opinion, to spend 
money wisely is even more difficult than to earn it. We 
hear much of a living wage, but the real problem is not in 
what the workman receives, but in what his wife spends. 
I will undertake to guarantee the stability of our American 
democratic institutions if you will see to it that American 
wives are taught how best to spend the money their 
husbands earn. Somewhere in that last ten per cent of 
a man's income are hidden av/ay his present happiness 
and future prospects. If that last ten per cent is ex- 
pended along with what has gone before, life must soon 
become a dreary routine, destructive alike of good health 
and high ambitions. If we could stop the noisy clatter 
of our educational machinery for a moment, I think we 
should hear in the awful silence these words, " With all 
thy getting, get understanding." And their interpreta- 
tion is this: the chief end of education is not, as many 
seem to think, to earn, to earn, to earn, but rather to spend, 
to spend, to spend; to spend prudently that there may be 
no waste; to spend wisely that the best may be obtained; 
to spend generously that as many as possible may be 
benefited thereby; to spend money that represents a 
man's toil so as to lighten his labors; to spend energy 
in such a way as to give increased strength; to spend time 
in order that more time may be had for the things that 
count. 

The art of discrimination. — This leads me to my fourth 
point — the appreciation of what is best in life. Good 



l8o THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

health, proper conduct, ability to earn a livelihood (even 
to the extent of accumulating great wealth) are meaning- 
less to him who knows not the relative values of what 
life offers. Lord Kelvin has said that the end of educa- 
tion is first to help a man earn a living, and then to make 
his life worth living. Life — human life — is a succes- 
sion of choices. It is the glory of man that he can choose, 
that he is free to put his own valuation on what is offered 
him. How important, then, that he should see life in its 
proper perspective, that he should feel the charm of 
nature, see the beauty in art, feel the uplift in literature 
and history, respect the truths of science, take comfort 
in religion, and find good in everything. This is the goal 
of all education. All else is a means to this great end. 
The one thing needful is the ability to discriminate in 
what life offers, to single out the best, and to appropriate 
it in the struggle for attainable ideals. 

Educating the leader. — Notwithstanding what I have 
said of the shortcomings of our public schools, I do believe 
in the best ideals of American education, just as I have 
an abiding faith in the ideals of American life. Equality 
of opportunity as guaranteed in our civil and industrial 
life is a possession of which we may well be proud. It 
comes to us sealed with the blood of our forefathers, and 
it is our duty to hand it on unsullied to our children. 
But we should not blind our eyes to the fact that it is the 
greatest experiment of the ages. Every other great nation 
that I know of has attained its greatness by a system of 
education that is calculated to keep the many down, 
while helping up the few. Germany and England have 
had one system of traim'ng the masses and another and 



THE VITAL THINGS IN EDUCATION l8l 

quite different system of training leaders. Our salvation 
depends upon our ability to work out a scheme of educa- 
tion which will make of every person who wills it a leader 
in his own way. The man of trained intelligence who 
works on the farm, or in the factory, or at a trade, may 
be a leader of as much social value as the man who engages 
in business or enters a profession. Granted good health, 
and habits of conduct which make of one an agreeable 
member of a community, and the abihty to earn a decent 
livehhood, I have no fear of social unrest or domestic 
unhappiness. The man or woman who can do something 
well is sure to take pride in the work, and to find satis- 
faction in doing it. 

The life worth while. — The final effort in all education, 
therefore, should be directed to the proper appreciation 
of the opportunities that Ufe offers. The education to 
which we are accustomed in school and college is properly 
the evaluation of what is best in fife. I do not ask that 
we abate in the slightest degree our zeal for the best in 
literature, history, and science. My plea is that we do 
also these things of which I have been speaking — - not 
that we should leave the others undone. 

The struggle to find what is best, and the determina- 
tion to pursue that course to the end, is the record of every 
good man's life. It is well that history and literature 
portray great characters and record their struggles. What 
man has done, I can do! — is the watchword of the boy 
who is surely going forward. The attainment of any 
virtue is made easier if good example attend the precept. 
The great ideals of Christian character were exemplified 
in the Hfe of the Master. He did not appeal to his dis- 



1 82 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

ciples to follow truth for its own sake, nor did he present 
the beautiful and the good in the abstract. And anyone 
who would upHft boy or girl, man or woman, must show 
that the good, the beautiful, and the true are the dynamic 
forces which make life worth living. The greatest good 
is the good that man can do; the purest beauty is the 
beauty that man may be; the noblest truth is the truth 
that makes man free. 

The lesson of life. — Not long since I visited in the South 
an institution that is linked with the names of two great 
men — Washington and Lee University. I was taken into 
the chapel on a beautiful spring afternoon by a man 
eminent in Southern life, who himself was a student in 
that institution about forty years ago. He said: "My 
home was near here in the Shenandoah Valley, and I was 
a boy too young to go to war. My father went, and did 
not come back. One brother after another followed him, 
and failed to return. Home was broken up, everything 
lost, father and brothers gone. After the war was over, 
when General Lee returned to the ways of peace and 
settled down as a teacher and as president of this institu- 
tion, my mother and I felt that there was only one thing 
for me to do, to become a student under General Lee." 

I thought of those four horrible years when that valley 
was a scene of carnage and destruction, when Lee's vic- 
torious army would sweep northward, and then Sheridan 
and his men force him back; back and forth through that 
valley, the granary of the Confederacy, they fought. 
And then I thought of that little boy, too young to take 
an active part in it, but not too young to suffer the con- 
sequences, striving to get inspiration from the nearer 



THE VITAL THINGS IN EDUCATION 1 83 

approach to the man who was reckoned a demigod by the 
people of Virginia. And as we stood in that chapel that 
afternoon and looked upon that magnificent recumbent 
statue of General Lee, this man said: "Do you know, 
the turning point in my life came one night right on this 
spot. It was a custom after General Lee died for the 
cadets of the school, the students, to stand guard over his 
tomb, and all night long I stood in this aisle with a musket 
in my hand, standing guard." 

Can you imagine what that means for a boy or for a 
girl? Why, that is almost all of education — standing 
guard, not over, but with, a noble soul! 



CHAPTER XI 

SCOUTING EDUCATION ^ 

IN times of unparalleled storm and stress, when the 
traditions of centuries crumble and the ideals of 
civilization are weighed in the balance of war, the 
patriots of every nation give anxious thought to the 
social order that shall arise from such chaos. Prepared- 
ness is the word that springs to every lip. It is used 
alike by those who would take the easiest way to let 
well enough alone, and by those who wish to reconstruct 
the world. In its lowest terms, it means preparation for 
miHtary defense against foreign aggression; in its highest 
reaches, it aspires to the regeneration of human nature, 
so that the brute in man shall forever be held in leash. 
However men may differ as to the means of bringing on 
the millennium, the fairest flower in the blood-soaked 
fields of the world to-day is the universal desire for peace 
on earth and good will to men. 

Rights and their correlatives. — There can be no peace 
without good will among men, and no will is good that 
does not beget justice, protect ownership, and secure 
Hfe, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are the 
rights of man, incorporated by our forefathers into the 
fabric of our government and bequeathed to us as a pre- 
cious legacy to have and to hold in trust for all those who 
would be citizens of a free and independent state. The 

• A revised reprint from the Teachers College Record, January, 1917. 

184 



SCOUTING EDUCATION 1 85 

right to worship God in one's own way; the right to trade, 
to conduct commerce, to accumulate property, to take up 
land, and, by occupation, to own it without restriction; 
the right to barter with one's neighbors in matters spiritual, 
temporal, and political; the right to be one's own master — 
these are the ideals of the founders of our nation. And 
when they set up a government of their own, they took 
particular pains to see that their rights were secure. 

Read the Constitution of the United States, and note 
the rights and duties enumerated. Duties are enjoined 
only upon office-holders for the protection of the rights 
of citizens; and, as if the directors of the joint-stock cor- 
poration could not be trusted to return adequate dividends, 
a string of amendments has been added, still further 
defining the rights of individuals. No word anywhere 
in that famous document directly defines the duties of 
citizens — an omission that would have wrecked the 
Republic in its infancy, except for the genius of Chief 
Justice Marshall and the assiduous labors of a few patriotic 
statesmen. But for more than a century we have slowly 
been learning the lesson that rights have their correlative 
duties; that the right to one's own property imposes the 
duty of protecting the property of others; that the right 
to freedom brings with it the duty of obedience to the law; 
that the right to pursue happiness enjoins the duty of 
guarding others from misery; and, in a word, that the 
rights of citizenship, secured by government, make it 
the duty of every citizen to give patriotic service when- 
ever needed and at whatever cost. 

Problems of individuality. — Individualism has so long 
been dominant in our social and political life, it is no wonder 



1 86 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

that it has also directed the course of our education. The 
theory that^ all men are created equal is easily interpreted 
to mean that any man may become anything. Granted 
that the individual has a right to direct his own develop- 
ment, does it follow that he may do as he pleases? And 
if the state provides schools and teachers for the educa- 
tion of the young, what has the state a right to expect 
from its training, and what is the duty of its pupils towards 
the public? Can individuals naturally selfish, who have 
the American way of wanting to do as they please, be 
trained in schools to be efficient, patriotic citizens? If 
so, what kind of training should an American school give 
to the prospective American citizen? Such questions 
as these are pressing for answer now as never before in 
our history. 

Teaching the duties of citizenship. — A survey of Amer- 
ican education does not disclose much evidence of a con- 
trolling desire to promote patriotic service. Indeed, if 
one were to confine one's attention to the work of the 
schools, particularly of the public schools, where, if any- 
where, one might expect to find the most direct efforts 
towards teaching the duties of citizenship, surprise and 
disappointment would follow. Teachers there are, in 
great numbers, who see the future man or woman in 
their pupils, and who labor unceasingly to fortify them 
against their day of need; but the test that passes pupils 
from grade to grade does not take into account growth 
in character or moral strength. The work of teachers is 
judged primarily by what their pupils know. The vir- 
tues and vices of our future citizens are a sealed book 
which our educational authorities do not open to inspec- 



SCOUTING EDUCATION 187 

tion. The state seems to have overlooked the fact that 
intellectual power is as great an asset to the crook as to 
the honest man. Public safety, therefore, calls for more 
than the schools are officially encouraged to give. 

Environment as an educational factor. — Education, 
however, is not wholly a matter of schools and school 
training. Indeed, if it were, we should come badly off. 
Consider for a moment the time problem. Our children 
are in school at the most five hours a day, five days in the 
week, for forty weeks in the year — a total of 1,000 hours. 
The average child of school age is awake fifteen hours a 
day for 365 days in the year — a total of 5,475 hours. 
Any way you reckon it, the normal child is receptive, 
getting impressions, using ideas, reaching conclusions, 
fixing habits, organizing his modes of behavior which, 
Professor James said, is education, four hours outside of 
school for every hour spent in school. Let the school 
be administered by directors of the widest vision and the 
highest ideals; let it be equipped with the best appliances, 
and staffed by teachers with the ripest scholarship, the 
finest training, and the clearest pedagogical insight, and 
you stiU have to reckon with forces inherent in the nature 
of the child and incident to his life in a society that are 
overwhelmingly and persistently directing his personal 
development. 

Educational deadwood. — Next consider what the child 
is required to learn in school: first, to read, write, and 
spell correctly, and to speak grammatically a language 
almost as foreign to the child and as artificial at the time 
as any alien tongue; second, to learn numbers and their 
manipulation in a way that does not appeal to him, be- 



156 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

cause beyond his needs, and to an extent that often sur- 
passes beHef; third, to learn something of history and 
Hterature, which may or may not be amenable to reason; 
fourth, to become familiar with certain elements of geog- 
raphy and natural science, which may or may not be 
elementary nor natural nor science; fifth, to dabble in 
music, art, handwork, cooking, sewing, and a variety 
of subjects more or less dependent upon the whims of 
school boards and the preferences of teachers. If to this 
showing of what is ordinarily regarded as essentials, you 
add the " dead wood " that has floated into our schools 
on the stream of tradition and remained there, because 
of the conservatism of teachers and the wisdom of college 
faculties, you have a very formidable collection of materials 
which custom decrees shall be packed away somewhere 
and somehow in a child's cranium. 

The child's share of the teacher's time. — In the third 
place, I want you to consider how much of a teacher's 
time the average child gets in a school-day. In our rural 
ungraded schools, the teacher may have from fifteen to 
forty different classes in a five- or six-hour day. When 
such a school has six or eight groups — not an uncommon 
occurrence — the hours of schooling become minutes, 
and not many of them. Our Commissioner of Educa- 
tion reports: " If every minute of the five-hour school-day 
could be used for recitations, the recitations would have an 
average of nine and one-half minutes each." Then turn 
to our city schools, with their classes of forty to sixty 
pupils ranged in rows, disciplined to silence, worked in 
teams. How many minutes a day does the average child 
get for personal contact with the teacher? How much 



SCOUTING EDUCATION 1 89 

time is given him for reflection on what he learns and for 
its assimilation into his spiritual life? What per cent 
of efficiency should be expected from his work? 

Inadequacy of the teaching staff. — And, finally, take 
account of the administration of our schools. Note that 
our rural teachers are but little older than their eldest 
pupils, with little more training for their work than the 
schools give in which they teach; that the teachers in our 
city schools are mostly young women who can be forced 
to work for less than the wage of street cleaners or of the 
cooks in our kitchen; that few of our principals and super- 
intendents have had any professional training whatever, 
although we live in a generation that requires trained 
physicians, trained lawyers, trained engineers, even trained 
veterinarians to look after our hogs and horses and cattle 
and lap dogs; and that the state entrusts the management 
of the largest, most far-reaching and expensive depart- 
ment of civil government to boards of directors with little 
knowledge of child nature or school work or social needs. 
What wonder that school funds are squandered in this 
country by the millions of dollars annually, that teaching 
is regarded as a trade rather than a profession, and that 
there is widespread dissatisfaction with the results of 
schooling! It is providential, however, that guardian 
angels keep watch over children and fools, otherwise the 
pupils in our schools and we who send them there would 
long ago have come to ruin. The truth is that, however 
badly our children do, it is safe to say that their teachers 
do worse; and, bad as teaching is, the adminstration of 
our schools is worse still. 

Limitations of school offerings- — Under prevaiHng 



igo THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

conditions, therefore, the most that can reasonably be 
expected is that our children should acquire in school a 
very moderate amount of useful knowledge, a few desir- 
able habits in the use of language and numbers, and some 
ability in facing squarely and solving accurately the prob- 
lems that they meet in life. We have no right to expect 
children on leaving our public schools at fourteen or 
sixteen years of age — and about nine tenths of them get 
no schooling after sixteen, — to be either clear thinkers 
or independent workers. They are unformed, not to say 
uninformed, but energetic and ambitious humans. At best, 
the school has given them a taste of the good things of 
life, has opened the door to opportunity, and roused in 
them a desire to take advantage of what life offers. It 
has done little, and, as things are at present, it can do 
little, to make them efficient workers in any vocation, 
or to equip them with those habits of mind and body 
essential to good citizenship. In other words, the school 
of to-day lacks the time, the means, and the professional 
ability to develop in its pupils the moral character which 
we expect in the good citizen. It does afford, however, 
the foundations on which that kind of character rests, 
and it does uphold the ideals towards which its pupils 
strive. 

The world outside the classroom. — Fortunately, educa- 
tion is more than schooling. The development of character 
for good or ill goes on, whether the child is in school or 
out of school. His impulse to imitate what he sees and 
adopt what he likes in the real world about him is more 
powerful, because more natural, than the tendency to 
identify himself with the artificial life of the schoolroom. 



SCOUTING EDUCATION I9I 

Hence the commanding importance of the playground 
and the educational significance of games that enlist a 
boy's best self in active cooperation with his fellows. 
If nothing better offers, he will take to the streets and find 
his place in a gang of kindred spirits, tearing down or build- 
ing up his neighbor's property and his own character at 
one and the same time. The real world of the public- 
school boy, " the world in which things of vital importance 
happen," as Kipling puts it, is the world outside the 
classroom — the world of the home or the street, of the 
church or the saloon, of the library or the pool room, 
of the club or the gang, or the world of brooks and trees 
and God's out-of-doors, or the world of alleys and back- 
yards and Hell's Kitchen. 

Teachers who are concerned with the education, as 
distinguished from mere instruction, of their pupils are 
earnestly seeking to merge their work with the best in- 
fluences in the home, in the church, and in society. They 
welcome all supplementary means of arousing a boy's 
ambition, of quickening his emotions, of attracting his 
interests, and of fixing his habits. They like to see him 
give himself whole-heartedly to something worth doing, 
whether it be work or play, and like to see him stick to the 
job until it is done They know that self-rehance, self- 
direction, and self-control come in no other way, and that 
preaching about the finest ideals of life leaves the boy 
untouched, unless he himself builds them into his own 
character. 

A power for boy betterment. — It is for these reasons, 
therefore, that I declare the Boy Scout movement to be 
the most significant educational contribution of our 



192 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

time. The naturalist may praise it for its success in put- 
ting the boy close to nature's heart; the moralist, for its 
splendid code of ethics; the hygienist, for its methods of 
physical training; the parent, for its ability to keep his boy 
out of mischief; but from the standpoint of the educator, 
it has marvelous potency for converting the restless, 
irresponsible, self-centered boy into the straightforward, 
dependable, helpful young citizen. To the boy who will 
give himself to it, there is plenty of work that looks 
like play, standards of excellence which he can appreciate, 
rules of conduct which he must obey, positions of 
responsibility which he may occupy as soon as he 
qualifies himself — in a word, a program that appeals 
to a boy's instincts, and a method adapted to a boy's 
nature. 

The scout curriculum. — This is not the place to dis- 
cuss the Boy Scout program. Most of you know it much 
better than I do. But I would consider myself a prince 
among schoolmen, if I could devise a school program in 
which the curriculum should appeal so directly to a boy's 
interests and the courses of study apply so serviceably 
to adult needs. Every task in scouting is a man's job 
cut down to a boy's size. The appeal to a boy's interests 
is not primarily because he is a boy, but particularly be- 
cause he wants to be a man. Scan the list: agriculture 
and angling, blacksmithing and business, carpentering 
and civics, dairying and mining, music and plumbing, 
poultry and printing, first aid and poHteness, life saving 
and nature study, seamanship and campcraft, patriotism 
and cooking, and scores of other accomplishments and 
activities requiring accurate knoweldge that is susceptible 



SCOUTING EDUCATION 1 93 

of direct and immediate application to everyday life. Every 
one of these tasks holds the boy, not only because he is 
a boy and likes to do them, but because they are tasks 
which grown men find useful. It is the man in the boy 
that is emphasized, and the type of manhood idealized 
is that which strives " to stand for the right against the 
wrong, for truth against falsehood, to help the weak and 
oppressed, and to love and seek the best things of life." 
Hence the scout oath taken by every boy on becoming a 
tenderfoot: " On my honor, I will do my best (i) to do 
my duty to God and my country, and to obey the scout 
law; (2) to help other people at all times; (3) to keep my- 
self physically strong, mentally awake, and morally 
straight." 

The scout curriculum may appear superficial to the 
pedagogue, and doubtless much that is taught is neither 
systematic nor comprehensive. But scoutcraft is not 
intended to be a substitute for schooling. It is a device 
for supplementing the formal instruction of the schools, 
by leading the boy into new fields and giving him a chance 
to make practical use of all his powers, intellectual, moral, 
and physical. The best thing about it is its extraordinary 
diversity, reaching out to boys of all degrees of mental 
ability, in all kinds of social environment, and creating 
for them a real need to do their level best. 

Upholding character and citizenship. — But the most 
significant contribution of the Boy Scout movement to 
education is its pedagogical methods. As a teacher, I 
take my hat off to Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the genius 
who in a bare decade has done more to vitalize the methods 
of character training than all the schoolmen in this country 

TREND IN ED. — 1 3 



194 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

have done since the Pilgrims landed on the New England 
coast. We have preached the virtues of a government 
of the people, by the people, and for the people, and have 
sought for the best means of perpetuating a nation con- 
ceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all 
men are created equal. There have been times when we 
doubted whether a nation so conceived and so dedicated 
can long endure. We know full well that the experiment 
must eventually fail, if our citizens grow up accustomed 
to the evils of selfishness and greed and indifferent to 
the ravages of pillage and plunder. And failure is just 
as certain, even if a little longer deferred, if our citizens 
are not trained to participate actively and constructively 
in upholding the virtues on which both personal character 
and good citizenship are based. 

Education through habit. — In the development of char- 
acter two processes are constantly at work, one tending 
to restrict the initiative of the subject, and the other to 
strengthen his personal will. The human infant is a rank 
individualist. His first cry is a protest against the treat- 
ment he receives. He wants what he wants when he 
wants it. But gradually, despite his objections, he becomes 
habituated to his environment. He must take the food 
supplied him, whether he Hkes it or not, and eventually 
he calls it good. He acquires a language that is not of 
his own making, and finally speaks as those about him 
speak. Even the inflections and intonation of voice 
pecuHar to his locality come to mark him as provincial. 
He may prefer to eat with his fingers and he may abhor 
the clothes he wears, but in time his table manners and 
habits of dress conform to prevailing fashions. Tasks at 



SCOUTING EDUCATION 1 95 

first laborious grow easy with practice, and practices, at 
first distasteful, become agreeable and necessary to his 
happiness. This is the process of education through 
habit, by which the individual is accustomed to the re- 
strictions and requirements of his social group. It is the 
way he acquires the likeness of his kind; it gives him his 
morals and his manners, and it sets standards of conduct 
which he dare not disobey. Witness the tyranny of the 
fashions and the punishment visited upon the obstreperous 
member of society who ventures to disregard the injunc- 
tions of the prevailing code of honor or the mandates of 
the moral order. Habits are the basis of all efficiency in 
accomplishment, whether in personal service or vocational 
employment. Otherwise, we should spend our days in 
learning anew the art of lacing our shoes or holding a pen 
or reciting the multiplication table. Moreover, a work- 
man likes to do what he can do well, and doing something 
well brings its own reward in pride of accomphshment, 
a living wage, and contentment with results. The sat- 
isfaction that comes from doing an honest day's work is 
the surest guarantee of conservative citizenship. 

The development of individuality. — The other process 
in education exerts a force diametrically opposed to the 
trend of custom and habit. It springs from the innate 
desire of the individual to be himself rather than to 
be someone else; is the outgrowth of his impulse to so 
protest when pressure is brought to bear upon him. One 
way consists in yielding to guidance; the other, in guiding 
one's self. One force makes for identity of kind, con- 
servatism and efficiency; the other, for individuality, 
initiative and progress. 



196 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Scout pedagogy. — These two forces, however, are but 
the two sides of the same shield, opposed, yet essentially 
one in the course of education. A man rises on liis dead 
self only in the sense that he rises by steps fixed in habit. 
The more steps in his ladder securely fixed, the higher he 
can rise. Once a child is in control of the complicated 
process of walking, he may use that habit in learning to 
run, to swim, to skate, and to ride a wheel; writing, made 
habitual, becomes so easy that the writer's whole atten- 
tion may be centered on what he writes. Habit gives 
such command of language that speech unconsciously 
follows thought; habit makes us familiar with our alphabet 
and tables, written signs and symbols and rules and ab- 
stract terms; habit begets our attitudes and appreciations, 
and determines our behavior in every crisis in life. Never- 
theless, habit is only the handmaid of invention. Origi- 
nality consists in giving to fixed habits a new organization 
and a progressive existence on a higher scale. When 
Bell invented the telephone, he used no material, law, or 
habit of operation not known before; but he did devise 
a new combination of them, which has forced us all into a 
new round of customs and habits in communication. 
Every normal human being, and every social group, from 
the family to the nation, is on the way somewhere; the 
important thing is that they should have leaders who 
know the way and who, like trustworthy scouts, will risk 
their lives that their comrades may live. 

While I have been speaking in parable, you surely realize 
that I have had the pedagogical methods of scouting in 
mind. When the tenderfoot takes his oath, he promises 
to do something. To be sure, it is stated in abstract terms 



SCOUTING EDUCATION igy 

and is a bit grandiloquent, but it serves the purpose of 
rounding up his moral energy. He is asked, as it were, 
to gird up his loins and to get set on his mark for the race 
to come. Then he is obliged to do something; in fact, he 
has already qualified in certain small " stunts," and every 
step in advance is marked by new habits fixed through 
persistent effort. Step by step, habit by habit, he passes 
from grade to grade. The content of his curriculum I 
have already discussed. What concerns me now is the 
method; and that, I repeat, is superb. 

Doing well something worth doing. — In contrast to the 
loose control of the home, sometimes severe, often lax 
and always personal, and to the discipline of the school, 
which is generally mechanical and autocratic, the methods 
of scouting asks the boy to do something that he thinks 
worth while and that he wants to do. Many of the tasks 
are self-imposed, because the boy chooses what he shall 
undertake; many of them require practice which he must 
do alone. His best efforts are enlisted in the acquisition 
of the right habit. And for every success some reward 
is given, a testimonial that converts a universal weakness 
of human nature into an element of strength, A great 
contribution to educational procedure — one that reflects 
severely upon the games and sports of our schools and 
colleges — is that in scout competition there are no losers. 
One scout's gain is not another's loss; when one patrol 
wins, some other one does not go down in defeat. Yet 
who will say that scouting exhibitions lack " pep " or vim 
or dogged determination? Scouting does not depend for 
its success upon side lines and cheer leaders; it finds its 
reward in the virtue of doing well something worth doing. 



igS THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

The human element. — Then, too, human nature is 
appealed to in the administrative system of scouting. The 
device of patrol and troop and community units and 
national organization puts the boy in touch with other 
scouts everywhere, gives him responsibility for the conduct 
of his fellows, and inspires him with pride in the cause. 
I venture to say that most scouts are in closer touch with 
their scoutmasters than they are with their school-teachers, 
and know Mr. West better than they know their super- 
intendent of schools or the state commissioner of education. 
The personal touch inherent in the system induces a sense 
of corporate responsibihty, makes a virtue of obedience 
to law, and through imitation, gives concrete expression 
to a code of honor unparalleled in modern chivalry. Its 
most striking feature is that it stresses duties instead of 
magnifying rights. The twelve commandments of scout- 
ing are stated in positive terms, rather than in the form 
of the Mosaic decalogue: "Thou shalt not." The scout 
is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, brave, clean, and reverent. 
Each of these laws, extraordinarily abstract in the sim- 
plicity of its formulation, is illustrated in the daily round 
of every boy's hfe. The scout's duty to do a good turn 
daily — a device worthy to rank with the sewing machine, 
the steam engine, and the telegraph, and of infinitely 
greater worth than any such mechanical contrivance for 
the development of character and the making of citizens — 
puts the boy not only in a position to understand the moral 
laws under which he lives, but to incorporate them into the 
fabric of his life. 

Regenerating the American boy. — The scout program, 
therefore, is essentially moral training for the sake of 



SCOUTING EDUCATION 1 99 

efficient democratic citizenship. It gives definite em- 
bodiment to the ideals of the school, and supplements 
the efforts of home and church. It works adroitly, by a 
thousand specific habits, to anchor a boy to modes of right 
living as securely as if held by chains of steel; but best 
of aU, it exhibits positive genius in devising situations 
that test a boy's self-reliance and give full scope to his 
talent and originality and leadership. These two aspects 
of the scout program are so evenly balanced and so nicely 
adjusted as to make them well-nigh pedagogically perfect. 
The entire organization is a machine capable of working 
wonders, not only in the moral regeneration of the American 
boy, but also in fitting him to assume the duties of an 
American citizen. 

Scout leadership. — The more delicate and intricate 
the machine, the greater the need of skilled operators. 
On you, therefore, who assume leadership in the Boy 
Scout movement rests a heavy responsibihty. If you are 
true to the motto of scouting, you, too, must " be prepared." 
You must know that your business is not primarily to make 
cooks or campers or hikers or students of nature, nor 
even efficient workers in any vocation. All these are means 
to ends, not ends in themselves. The real purpose of your 
office is to help boys to translate the Golden Rule into 
concrete terms and to keep themselves physically strong, 
mentally awake, and morally straight. I have tried to 
show you that the method you must follow is the simple 
one of fixing habits and creating situations that invite 
leadership. The danger is that the very simpHcity of 
procedure may betray you into mistaking means for ends. 
It is the mistake that so many fraternal organizations for 



200 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

adults make; it is the error into which so many teachers 
fall. Be prepared to measure every task by its results 
in character building. Weigh the relative value of the 
habits that you can inculcate. Fix the best ones by 
insistent practice, keep them alive by repetition, and make 
each one a step to a higher level. Then strive to locate 
responsibility; put on a boy' shoulders all the load that he 
can carry ; increase it as he gathers strength ; let him feel the 
Joy of mastery; and reward him according to his service. 

The program for the future. — If your vision is faulty, 
the ditch that yawns for blind leaders of the blind is not 
far ahead of you. On the other hand, if you see things 
straight and see them whole, you have every inducement 
to demonstrate your ability to lead. Opportunities to 
show initiative, self-direction, and self-control are not 
confined to the boys of your troops. Splendid as your 
program is, it is not beyond the reach of improvement. 
Genius gave it life, and only genius can keep it alive. 
If ever this program, which I have praised so highly, 
becomes formal; if your work as scoutmasters and 
scout leaders drops into routine; if your system of 
administration gets so enamored of its success that it 
becomes autocratic, you will all be on the highroad to 
oblivion. The best of athletics may grow stale, and the 
strongest team may fail from over-confidence. It is rela- 
tively easy to build up a business, but it is extraordinarily 
difi&cult to keep it at its maximum efficiency. The maxi- 
mum efficiency of this great movement depends finally upon 
the worth of your contributions to it. The call still is for 
men of vision, men with initiative, men of nerve and daring, 
men who, by every test, are fit to be called "good scouts." 



CHAPTER XII 

EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY ^ 

THE teaching profession, it seems to me, is singu- 
larly indifferent to the signs of the times. Either 
we are content to attend to business as usual 
because we don't know what else to do, or we fail to realize 
the significance of the revolution which is upon us. It 
would seem that of all vocations, ours should be the quick- 
est to respond to the call to democracy, and the first to 
propose ways and means of making democracy safe for 
the world. Inasmuch as a confession of not knowing 
what to do belies our claims to professional leadership, 
and failure to understand the meaning of events implies 
an awful ignorance of precisely that history which we are 
supposed to teach, I am obliged, out of polite considera- 
tion for my coworkers, to seek elsewhere for the causes of 
our somnolence. 

Our faith in democracy. — The truth is, as I see it, we 
teachers are much, like other folks; we have not taken 
our democracy very seriously. We have all wanted to 
do as we pleased, and to be let alone in working out our 
own individual salvation. For this private advantage, 
we have been willing to entrust our civil government 
to the tender mercies of petty politicians and party bosses; 
we have winked at the violation of law, and tolerated 
slavery, and serfdom, and industrial oppression; we have 

'A revised reprint from the Teachers College Record, May, 1918. 

201 



202 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

been indifferent to the ravages of plunder and greed, 
and to the losses due to administrative inefficiency. All 
these faults we have been guilty of at times, — and worse, 
if worse there be — but such faults as these are in reality 
the concomitants of our virtues. We have sinned in these 
respects, simply because our faith in mankind is so strong. 
We are essentially optimists, and we have relied on the 
best in humanity to overcome the worst. In evidence of 
our national good intent I have only to point out what 
has happened when the public conscience has been aroused. 
Political parties have been punished for their shortcomings, 
slavery has been abolished, plunderers have been over- 
whelmed, the thraldom of child labor has been lightened, 
corporate greed has been checked, and the prohibition 
of social evils has been enjoined by highest law. It is 
characteristic of the democratic mind to believe the best 
of all mankind, to have faith that somehow the good will 
triumph over the bad. But it is equally true of the in- 
dividualist that he wants his own way, and that he will 
wreak his vengeance upon those who persistently betray 
his confidence. The present world commotion shows that 
the optimists have been betrayed by those in whom they 
put their trust. Vengeance is mine, is their watchword. 
The outcome bids fair to match the bitterness of their 
disappointment. 

The obligation of democracy. — The striving of the 
world towards democracy is as old as human society. 
The " inalienable rights of man " are the natural outcome 
of the iustinct to self-expression and self-realization. 
The doctrine of brotherly love formulated by Jesus and 
propagated by the Christian Church as a world religion, 



EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 203 

has been bedded deep in the consciousness of the modern 
world. But nowhere has there been a democratic State. 
The age-long struggle between autocracy and democracy 
has never resulted in the complete suppression of the one 
or the complete victory of the other. At best the result 
has been an aristocracy or oligarchy, with leanings towards 
autocracy or towards democracy. The ordinary affairs 
of life go on much the same under any decent government. 
One must keep off the grass, if the park is worth preserv- 
ing; keep the fire-escape clear, if safety is essential; observe 
the regulations of the health officer in time of quarantine; 
pay one's debts, and live up to contracts; help others when 
they are in need; tell the truth, fear God, and shame the 
devil. It matters a great deal, however, what is one's 
attitude toward these obhgations and how one comes to 
recognize them as obligations. If the attitude is one of 
subservient acquiescence engendered by fear, or even by 
unquestioning obedience to external authority, the lean- 
ing is towards autocracy. If, on the contrary, conduct 
springs from an understanding of the necessity of such 
action, or if obligation is accepted after reasonable con- 
sideration by those concerned, the emphasis is democratic. 
A study in extremes. — Our policy has been to abide by 
the rule of the majority. We have advocated liberty 
under the law, and assumed that the law was just. Now 
the previous question is being put. Is the law just? Who 
shall say? What is liberty? On the answer to these 
questions depends all our future happiness, all our hope 
for ourselves, for our children, and for our country. If 
justice cannot be assumed by the rule of the majority, who 
shall decide what is right? Shall a group of intellectuals? 



204 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Shall a political party? Shall an industrial corporation? 
Shall a labor union? Shall any one class in the State enjoy 
the privilege of setting" standards for all others? If not 
a class or a group or a party, shall each one decide what is 
right for himself? Our oldest history tells us in its own 
strong Bibhcal phrase, that when " every man did that 
which was right in his own eyes," there was anarchy in 
the land. It may be providential that we see clearly 
to-day the logical end of two extremes of government: 
Germany, the confessed autocrat, surfeited with ambition 
and drunk with power, trampling on the rights of individuals 
to gain world dominion for a favored few; Russia, the 
would-be democrat, impatient of restraint and blind to 
all sense of civic duty, groveling in anarchy, that each 
citizen may do as he pleases. If these lessons shall be 
learned, the war will not have been fought in vain. 

Living the Golden Rule. — Whatever may have been 
the purpose of those who started the war, however selfish 
the intent of either party at the beginning, it is perfectly 
clear now that the public conscience of those opposed to 
the forces of autocracy is stirred to the depths. The 
whole world is leaning towards democracy. We may not 
know what democracy means; we may be blind to the evils 
of a system that easily substitutes license for liberty; we 
may be selling our birthright for a mess of pottage; but we 
have reached the decision that a change is inevitable. 
Indeed, the change has already come. Every day a 
new order of Government is handed down, regulating 
transportation by rail and water, fixing prices of necessary 
commodities, telling us what we shall eat and how we shall 
clothe ourselves — all to the end, it is said, that we may win 



EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 205 

the war. It seems to me, rather, that we are being dis- 
ciplined by an inexorable schoolmaster to meet the hard- 
ships of the future. Just now, like naughty children, we 
are doubtless scared into being good. Later on, when 
the fright is past, we shall be disposed to slip back into our 
old ways. The slogan, " Business as usual," will ring 
out over all the land. Trade and transportation will make 
desperate efforts to recoup their losses; store and factory, 
farm and market, school and college, will gravitate towards 
their old positions. Let no one, however, make the mis- 
take of thinking that any of these enterprises will ever 
again be what they were before the war. [A. government 
that shows it can take over railroads and commandeer 
shipping fleets, will never again be helpless in the regula- 
tion of transportation; the power that can fix the price 
of coal and wheat, will have the chance to try it again 
on a larger scale, when the majority so decrees; if sub- 
sidies can be provided to buy farms, build workmen's 
houses, and supply luncheons for school children, it is only 
a short step to public largesses for all who are hungry or 
in need of financial aid. And by these very means democ- 
racy may be easily transformed into anarchy. Call it 
what you will — socialism, Bolshevism, or something 
worse, — we have passed the era of free competition, 
where each stood on his rights and was disposed to define 
his rights to suit himself, into another era, wherein the ideal 
is justice for all, and for each the right to get what he 
deserves. The majority may continue to rule, but it must 
be a majority that exercises the duty of protecting the rights 
of the minority. While philosophers are striving to define 
the meaning of democracy and statesmen are giving a 



2o6 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

civic form to social justice, schoolmasters will be wrestling 
with a new set of pedagogical problems. The doctrine 
that all shall get what they deserve presupposes that the 
largest possible number shall be taught to want what it is 
right that they should have. The fundamental problem 
of a democratic State, as I see it, is an educational one: 
the problem of teaching the proper appreciation of life- 
values and of training citizens to act in accord with the 
precepts of the Golden Rule. 

An educational challenge. — It is easy to talk in general 
terms, as I have been doing. Almost everybody now- 
adays who talks at all, talks in that way. It is a con- 
venient way of concealing thought. It is high time, 
however, that someone should make concrete suggestions 
of the " brass tack " variety. It is even more important 
that someone should do something worth while. No- 
where is the need greater than in our own field. I would 
that I could both say the proper word and do the proper 
thing, but I am neither a philosopher nor a pedagogical 
expert. The most I can do is to appeal to you graduates 
of Teachers College to do your bit, and to do it before it 
is too late. I can put to you the questions which the 
public will soon be asking, and for which answers speedily 
will be demanded. The reaction of any one of us may be 
of little weight, but the voice of 25,000 Teachers-College 
students can make itself heard. 

The first question is, What are the schools for? The 
stereotyped answer is, The schools are for all the people. 
Suppose, however, that when the balance of power in our 
Government goes over to those who, in Mr. Schwab's 
words, " work with their hands, " your new masters say 



EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 207 

that the schools are not, and never have been, intended 
to meet the needs of their children, that they were estab- 
lished to train leaders for Church and State, that their 
chief function to-day is to equip a favored few for profes- 
sional work, that they cater to an aristocracy of high- 
brows and money-getters, that they spend the people's 
money to make one of a hundred the master of the other 
ninety-nine, and that, in short, they are not democratic 
either in aim or method. The ready retort to such a 
challenge is that American schools, from the lowest to the 
highest, are open to all, that no one is denied educational 
advantages by reason of race, creed, or previous condition 
of servitude, that public education is free, and that the 
system provides for instruction in any subject and to any 
extent that the public is willing to support. 

Is educational progress restricted? — But in saying that, 
you are really asking the next question, What should our 
schools teach? Should they offer instruction in any 
subject and to any extent that the public is willing to 
support? Is the converse true, that what the public, 
or that part of the public that happens to be in control, 
does not want, or has no use for, should be eliminated? 
If it be true that class interests in the past have operated 
to restrict educational advantages to a favored few, will 
new class interests in the future seek to retaliate by giving 
special privileges to some other class? 

And finally, Who shall control our schools? Shall it 
continue to be lay boards, chosen by popular vote, or 
selected to represent some political party or local group? 
Shall our schools and teachers be at the mercy of those 
who, happening to have a little power, use it in a little 



2o8 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

way? Is the expert in education to be merely the paid 
agent of a board or a party or a labor union? How other- 
wise can a democracy attain its ends but by controlling 
the education of future citizens? If some citizens are set 
aside for the purpose of teaching, how can you be sure 
they will teach the democratic faith? Shall we have 
some day a pedagogical creed to which teachers, hke 
theologues, must subscribe? Will that lead to trials for 
heresy and the dismissal of nonconformists? Will a 
democracy find it expedient to substitute for the estab- 
lished church of the old regime a state-supported and state- 
controlled school system? If that should come to pass, 
wherein would democracy essentially differ from autocracy? 
The stamp of autocracy. — Despite the apparent reductio 
ad absurdum, these questions are not trivial. It were 
easy to point out sufficient cause for every question listed 
here. For example, who doubts that our schools denied 
equal opportunity to all for gaining a livelihood until, 
within a decade, the demand for vocational training could 
no longer be resisted? And who would say, even now, 
that children who want training for work in shop and 
factory, for store and countinghouse, for farm and home, 
can get what they need as freely and as universally as those 
who can afford to go forward to professional service can get 
theirs? Moreover, it is all too true that many of those 
who have profited most from professional training, given 
them at public expense, have miserably failed to return 
to the public that kind of service which professional honor 
demands. When the great state of New York undertakes 
to prescribe military drill, and Ohio to portray the evils 
of alcoholic indulgence by textbook and prescribed lessons, 



EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 209 

we may confidently expect other states to require the study 
of civics of a particular brand. If German can be elimi- 
nated from the schools by act of a board of education, 
why not Latin or history or mathematics? If Garyized 
schools can be a party issue in the city of New York, and 
thrown out by popular vote on the grounds of expense, 
who knows when the high schools and the College of the 
City of New York will go the same route? If teachers 
can be dismissed from service because they cannot con- 
scientiously support some of the actions of our present 
Government, how can permanence of tenure be assured to 
disloyalists under some succeeding government? The 
theory that to the victors belong the spoils has been too 
long a recognized principle of action to make improbable 
that it will never again be revived. If democracy under- 
takes this line of advance, it will need for fulfillment both a 
State Church and a State School, supplemented by liberal 
largesses to the proletariat, to keep the citizens in order. 
The final scene is reached when the travesty of democracy 
gives way to a military dictatorship. 

The program of education. — Perhaps I have said enough 
to cast some doubt on the sufficiency of old ways and means 
to meet new conditions. My own behef is that so long as 
we cling to our old habits of thinking and acting, we shall 
never solve the problems of our new democracy. The 
new order demands a new philosophy and a new mode of 
attack. If the difference between an autocratic State and 
a democratic State be a matter of emphasis, it follows 
that the system of education adapted to an autocratic 
society will differ from the system adapted to a democratic 
society chiefly in the way it leans. The autocratic State 

TREND IN ED. — 1 4 



2IO THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

puts power in the hands of a few, and trains them to use it 
in the interests of a privileged class; if binds the many 
down by the disciphne of obedience, of reverence, and of 
poverty. The thirst for power stimulates the greed of 
money, the search for usable knowledge, and the demand 
for practical efficiency. The democratic State, on the 
other hand, emphasizes the rights of man, and imposes 
on each citizen the duty of being his brother's keeper. 
The educational program of a democracy, therefore, must 
stress the universality and the practicability of moral 
forces. 

Forgetting relative worths. — A survey of the recent 
history of education in the United States raises consider- 
able doubt of our pedagogical contribution to democracy. 
In our universities, we have made an idol of scientific 
research; we have weighed and measured and timed 
everything capable of being accurately tested by quan- 
titative methods; we have used our technical schools to 
forward every conceivable application of science to art 
and industry ; we have rejoiced in invention, and — too 
often — have set the dollar mark as the crown of success 
in discovery. In our lower schools we have concerned 
ourselves with curricula and courses of study and efficiency 
in administration. We have systematized and standardized 
and organized our work so that untrained or half-trained 
teachers might get measurable results. From grade to 
grade and from school to. school, promotion has depended 
upon the passing of examinations on what pupils have 
accumulated for exhibition purposes. Had it not been for 
the wholesome common sense of our public-school teachers, 
I doubt not that the German standard of scholarship 



EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 211 

and the German standard of efficiency would long ago 
have dominated our lower schools as they have controlled 
the policy of our universities. 

Now, I have no quarrel with scholarship or scientific 
research. If a democracy cannot stand the truth, it can- 
not endure; and if it ceases to add to human knowledge, 
it will surely stagnate and finally deserve to perish. The 
trouble with our schools and colleges is that they have 
been satisfied with knowledge put up, Hke breakfast foods, 
in small packages with attractive labels but indigestible 
contents. The main thing has been to get knowledge 
because, in the words laboriously copied when we were 
learning to write, " Knowledge is Power," but in our 
getting we have sometimes forgotten the injunction of the 
wise man to get understanding. We have been so keen 
to get the exact letter of the truth, so exact that the degree 
of variability can be measured and recorded in decimals 
of many points, that we have often missed the spirit that 
giveth life. Exactness is no crime, however, and measure- 
ment is not a sin. In fact, Americans might safely accus- 
tom themselves to greater exactness and apply more 
certain measurement to their work. The fault is, not 
that we have been too accurate, but that we have given 
too little attention to the relative worth and moral sig- 
nificance of the facts at our command. 

The quest for moral standards. — The ideals of the 
democracy towards which we are leaning are essentially 
moral, rather than intellectual or material. The intel- 
lectual and the material we have with us, and we are not 
likely to quit our hold on either. What I fear is that we 
shall not quickly seize upon the moral issues now presented 



212 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

to US and incorporate them into our educational system. 
There is an autocratic way of doing things and there is a 
democratic way. The autocratic method stresses con- 
stituted authority, hands down rules and regulations, 
asks not the reasons why, assumes to know a priori what is 
best and right, and brooks no interference from those who 
may prefer not to be benefited in such predetermined 
fashion. The democratic method depends for its success 
upon cooperative effort and the acceptance of standards 
that are reasonably convincing. The one tends to drive; 
the other to lead. The subject of a monarchical State is 
not asked to understand, he need only obey. The free 
citizen who understands but does not obey is a menace to 
the State; he must know the right, accept it, and then un- 
hesitatingly do his duty. In a final analysis, the safety 
of the State, the maintenance of civil order and social 
stability, depends primarily upon the discipline that 
makes right conduct habitual. 

Americans are obsessed with a knowledge of the rights 
of man. We take it in our mother's milk; it seems to 
pervade the very air we breathe. But we are slow to learn 
that for every right there is a corresponding duty, for 
every privilege, a corresponding responsibihty. A right 
once learned is immediately in working order, but a duty 
recognized may result in nothing more than a twinge of 
conscience. A duty does not become a potent force until 
it is fixed in habit. Once grant that schools are respon- 
sible for the character of their students, that they must 
teach the moral law, and see that its precepts function 
in the lives of citizens, we are transported into a new peda- 
gogical realm. The most important part of our business, 



EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 213 

then, becomes a matter of method. DiscipHne of a special 
kind takes a commanding place. How shall right habits 
be inculcated, and how shall selfish traits be eliminated? 
Answer this question, and you are on the highroad to 
success in the new pedagogical era. 

Freedom of choice. — Someone may say, however, that 
right habits and good character are matters of opinion, 
that what suits one may not suit another, and that it will 
be just as difl&cult to satisfy our prospective masters on 
these points as on any other. My reply is that the free- 
dom of a democracy consists not in doing what you please 
as an individual, nor in doing what you please as a class 
or party, but rather in the privilege of choosing your own 
authority and following your own leaders. It is the es- 
sence of government to rule, and the authority of a govern- 
ment must be respected. No one of us can escape the 
necessity of obedience to custom and law. We must 
yield or be outcasts of society. Under an autocracy we 
obey without question; under a democracy, we question 
and then obey. In either case, obedience is a virtue and 
disobedience is a sin or crime. The strongest motive to 
conformity in the one case is confidence in the ruHng 
power; the dominant force in the other is the desire to see 
things straight and see them whole. The valuation of 
authority, either in the choice of leaders or the acceptance 
of standards, is a responsibility that may not be shirked 
by any citizen of a democratic State. It is the raison 
d'etre of pubhc education for all the people and to the 
widest extent. 

Servants of the State. — A democracy does not raise 
the question of transcendental right. It sees nothing 



214 THE TREND LN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

esoteric in the Golden Rule, and knows that no government 
or nation can long endure that disregards it. If the new 
democracy be merely a guise for a new kind of class selfish- 
ness, it will not last; if it have no higher purpose than to 
exploit those who disagree, it is bound to lose. I have 
faith that men capable of reconstructing a world that has 
been drenched with blood, weighed down with poverty, 
and overwhelmed with sorrow, will not be found wanting 
either in sympathy or vision or common sense. Mistakes 
will doubtless be made, and progress may be slow, but if 
the new generation be taught aright, success will surely 
come. The corner stone of the new state will be educa- 
tion — not merely instruction in things worth knowing 
but also discipline in things worth doing. It will be 
education for citizenship in a society that is pledged to 
maintain justice for all and to guarantee to each the at- 
tainment of what he deserves. This is work for strong 
teachers — teachers who can free themselves from ham- 
pering traditions, teachers who can rise above party and 
class and creed, teachers who practice what they preach, 
and who preach only the truth. Such teachers need fear 
no act of legislature nor any mandate of a governing board. 
Bound by professional honor, they will command liberty 
for themselves by assuring freedom to their fellow men. 
Servants of the State, they will show their loyalty in patri- 
otic deeds. They call to us to come up higher. It is our 
reasonable service. We can do no less and be true to the 
highest ideals of our profession. 



nn 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE ORGANIZATION OF TEACHERS ^ 

HE obvious outcome of the World War in educa- 

■ tion is that schools more than ever before are 

agencies of the State. The need is for better 

and more patriotic citizens. More and better education 

is the only certain means of getting a better citizenship. 

Teachers are servants of the State. — The greatest 
obstacles to the Americanization of our schools are the 
traditions affecting the employment, remuneration, and 
qualifications of teachers. The teacher as a civil servant 
whose foremost duty is the promotion of the welfare of 
the State is a new conception in American life. Time was 
when the teacher was a chattel sold in the open market, 
or a private tutor employed to give instruction in subjects 
selected by parents, or an adherent of some church whose 
chief qualification was his ability to safeguard the tenets 
of his sect. Now teachers are employed by boards of 
education of a district or city under rules and regulations 
only slightly limited by state laws. And despite all laws 
enjoining it, the principle that education is a function of 
the state is recognized ; practically, the conduct of schools 
is a local enterprise, controlled by petty officials who are 
ever biased by local interests and personal whims. The 
teacher is in reality the employee of the local board, and 
as an employee, is subjected to all the vagaries of local 

' An address delivered before the students on the occasion of the Opening Session of 
Summer School, Teachers College, 1919. 

215 



2l6 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

pride and prejudice. To overcome these faults, some 
of our states have created laws to protect the teacher and 
define his work, but an individual teacher, no matter 
how just his cause or how patriotic his intent, has little 
chance of being heard, if his desires run counter to the 
whims of the local board. Group action seems to be the 
only way to progress in a democratic State. 

Upsetting tradition. — The tradition that a teacher is an 
employee of a family or institution or community, to 
give such service as the employer wants, is responsible 
for the practice of hiring teachers in the cheapest market. 
When teachers are paid less than janitors, milkmen, and 
street cleaners, it is obvious either that sweatshop methods 
prevail or that the services given are of little worth. 
Whether a person's service is worth much or little depends 
upon his vocational skill and his will to work. Back of 
technical ability lies knowledge. The person who knows 
what to do and how to do it is an artisan, a trade worker; 
he who also knows why he does it, and in his doing is guided 
by high ideals, is a professional worker. By tradition, 
teaching is a trade; we hope to make it a profession — 
not merely for the well-being and comfort of teachers, 
but because the country has need of instructors possessing 
culture, techm'cal knowledge, and professional skill who will 
patriotically devote themselves to the service of the nation. 
In the Americanization of our public schools we need 
professional experts, and it is the duty of those who know 
the kind of expert service needed, to use all honorable 
means of securing it. 

A policy of employment. — When teachers are regarded 
as employees, it inevitably follows that their services are 



THE ORGANIZATION OF TEACHERS 217 

measured in terms of private interest rather than public 
good. Tenure of ofl&ce, remuneration, and vocational ad- 
vancement are all conditioned upon satisfying their 
employers. Resistance to official demands, however unrea- 
sonable, and advocacy of reforms, however desirable, are 
alike dangerous experiments, when the take-it-or-leave-it 
policy of employment is in force. Under such circum- 
stances, cooperation for any purpose except mutual pro- 
tection is hardly to be thought of. So it happens that the 
individual teacher is left to himself to ply " the sorriest 
of trades." 

A premium on specialization. — Once grant, however, 
that the Americanization of our public schools calls for 
expert leadership, and that the methods used and the 
ends sought are not subject to private control or local 
bias, and you put teachers on a different status. Not 
only is a premium put on culture, technical knowledge, 
and professional skiU, but it becomes a patriotic duty to 
realize the highest professional ideals in the training of 
American citizens. The individual teacher will find in- 
spiration and renewed courage in the consciousness of 
marching shoulder to shoulder with his fellows in the 
mighty army recruited to fight the battles of civilization 
and modern democracy. 

Fostering consciousness of kind. — The time is past, it 
seems to me, when teachers should be dissuaded from group 
organization. Th€ war has made some kind of organiza- 
tion inevitable in that it has given to teaching a new 
objective and to teachers a new consciousness of kind. 
The new patriotism, founded in justice and devoted to 
freedom, must be imprinted on the coming generations. 



2l8 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

It is this sense of overwhelming responsibility that is 
forcing our ablest leaders to devise ways and means of 
unifying the latent strength of the half-million of teachers 
in the country. In this effort, they are but following at a 
respectful distance the example of our oldest professions, 
law and medicine, which long ago set up professional 
standards and adopted codes of professional ethics. They 
also have before them the example of trade-unions, and 
some teachers, smarting under the injustice of insufficient 
wage, have not hesitated to grasp the hand of labor. The 
time has come when teachers must decide whether they 
will lead in their own way, or be led in some other way, 
whether they will set up standards worthy of a profession, 
or continue to be employees in a trade. 

Professional standards. — An organization of teachers, 
nation-wide and properly authoritative, must be founded 
on principles that will be universally recognized as valid, 
and its conduct must be above reproach. No selfish motive 
can be allowed to interfere with the realization of its ideals. 
If the present world crisis makes such an organization 
possible, it also imposes acceptance of professional 
standards. 

A code of professional ethics, therefore, is the first and 
most important desideratum — a code reaching to the 
individual teacher and defining the purpose of the organi- 
zation. The organization itself exists merely to consoli- 
date the strength of its individual members and to apply 
it at strategic points. The problems of tactics and strat- 
egy, however, must be in the hands of competent leaders 
who themselves shall be guided by professional ideals. 

I do not flatter myself that I have any special quali- 



THE ORGANIZATION OF TEACHERS 219 

fications for writing a code of ethics for teachers. A code 
that will command the confidence of the public and at the 
same time protect the rights and define the responsibility 
of the teacher, will be the work of many persons. Con- 
stitutions that last are works of genius, but most of them 
grow from very humble beginnings. 

An ethical code for teachers. — This, then, is my con- 
tribution: 

1. Every teacher in the organization must be one 
hundred per cent American. 

Training for citizenship is more than giving instruction 
in school subjects. Patriotism, loyalty, and courage are 
as contagious as measles. Right example is the surest 
way to inculcate appreciations and attitudes and to 
demonstrate the value of fair play, teamwork, and self- 
control. 

2. The work of the teacher must be professional in 
character and honestly performed. 

Malpractice in teaching is more serious than malpractice 
in medicine; the fact that proof of incompetence in the 
teacher is buried in the retarded lives of children is no 
release from moral responsibility. The organization must 
concern itself with the qualifications of teachers — their 
training, certification, and classroom ability. A corol- 
lary is that good service should be rewarded and the honest 
teacher protected. 

3. The teacher, as a faithful servant, is worthy of his 
hire. 

No true teacher ever has worked, or ever will work, 
solely for money. The necessity of standardizing salaries 
in a great school system will always militate against the 



220 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

recognition of individual merit, but this is no excuse for 
rating all at the value of the poorest. A living wage is 
one that counts the cost of preparation and the value of 
the output, as well as the expenditure of time and energy 
in the day's work. There should be no discrimination 
against sex, grade, or school — equal pay for equal work 
by those giving equal service. The same devotion to 
the kindergarten or the rural school or the high school 
given by teachers of equal attainments, whether men or 
women, theoretically merits the same professional stand- 
ing and the same remuneration. Practically, however, 
classification is imperative in a school system as a basis 
for the assignment of duties and adjustment of salaries, 
but it should not operate to check personal ambition or 
restrict professional advancement. One object of organiza- 
tion is to protect the weak from exploitation and to help 
them to a higher professional and economic status. An- 
other object of no less importance, is to minimize the 
practical difficulties incident to the operation among 
teachers of the law of supply and demand, and to the 
varying standards of fitness as set for different grades. 
No democratic nation can endure that does not have 
good teachers. And no teacher can give his best who 
does not enjoy a Hving wage. 

4. The organization must be honest and straightforward 
in its dealings with the public. 

Collective bargaining is a two-edged sword. It must be 
used by the organization in securing proper buildings and 
equipment, higher professional standards for teachers, 
better teaching in the schools, and adequate salaries for 
those who do the work. It means appeals to public opinion, 



THE ORGANIZATION OF TEACHERS 221 

bargaining with school boards, and arguments to legis- 
lators, but it should not mean threats, intimidation, and 
strikes, A contract is inviolable. The teacher who is 
not forced to accept appointment and who cannot be 
locked out of his schoolroom has no excuse to strike. 
When every expedient is exhausted and a school or system 
is still unwilling to put its work on a professional basis, 
the last resort that is honorable is for teachers to refuse 
appointment and to brand that school or system as un- 
patriotic. It follows that no teacher with any professional 
pride will fill a place left vacant under such circumstances. 

5. The organisation should cooperate with every other 
group of citizens for the promotion of the public good, but 
should avoid entangling alliances with anyone. 

Entangling alliances. — - The teacher occupies a peculiar 
position in the body pohtic. He instructs children in 
the rights and duties of citizens. His wards of to-day 
are the voters of to-morrow. Some of them will be found 
in every group, party, sect, and organization that exists 
in the community. He should teach them the fundamental 
principles of American Hfe and help them to make wise 
choices in their affiliations, but he may not proselytize 
or conduct propaganda for any cause on which citizens 
are divided. A decent respect for the opinions of others 
must characterize all that he does. The organization, 
therefore, which acts as the super-teacher cannot favor 
either Jew or Gentile, repubHcan or democrat, capitalist 
or laborer. It honors them all for the good they scrive 
to do, and will join with them in all good works, but it 
cannot be subservient to anyone. I realize that the 
American Federation of Labor is potentially one of the 



2 22 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

most beneficent organizations in the United States, and I 
have the highest regard both for its leaders and for their 
objects, but it would be a mistake both for the Federation 
of Labor and for the prospective organization of teachers, 
to form an offensive and defensive alliance. It might 
be the easiest way to secure an increase of teachers' salaries, 
but more pay is not the only object of a teachers' organiza- 
tion, and not the one that will insure its greatest usefulness 
either to the profession or to the public. 

It would be just as fatal to become entangled with the 
Manufacturers' Association, the Bar Association, the 
Christian Association, or the Democratic Party. If this 
latter suggestion is ludicrous, so also is the example set 
by some groups of teachers who have already identified 
themselves with the labor organizations. " Friends with 
all, but allies of none," must be the slogan of a teachers' 
organization. 

The attainment of professional aims. — These five 
points seem to me worthy of consideration by those who 
would write a code of ethics for teachers and a constitu- 
tion for a teachers' organization. My chief concern is to 
free teachers from local oppression, to change their status 
from employees of a school board to servants of the State, 
to demand of them professional fitness, and to expect of 
them professional service, and to evaluate their worth by 
their contribution to American citizenship. Once these 
ends are attained, I am certain the public will gladly pay 
the price. Center the united strength of half a million 
of teachers on these points, and the teachers' millennium 
will soon be ushered in. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING ^ 

THE problem of professional training is to-day the 
most important problem in the administration 
of American universities. Reckoned in terms of 
cost, or of equipment necessary, or of students and teachers 
engaged, there is no other feature of university work 
so prominent. Indeed, if student population continues 
to increase at a ay thing like the ratio of increase experi- 
enced in the last decade, the time is surely coming when 
some of our universities — particularly state univer- 
sities — wiU be exclusively devoted to professional train- 
ing and to the prosecution of research — itself a highly 
specialized form of professional training. The academic 
instruction now given in the freshman and sophomore 
years will be relegated to junior colleges, as is now being 
done in California, where the State University is over- 
crowded. Even a short look ahead jusiifies special 
consideration of the nature and extent of professional 
training in the future development of the university. 

Shortening the period of apprenticeship. — What is 
professional training? Let me say at the outset that I 
do not regard it as anything esoteric. It is merely a device 
to shorten the period of apprenticeship undertaken by 
every learner who would acquire the knowledge and skill 
possessed by the leaders in his field. It is a means of 

'An address delivered at the inauguration of Lotus D. Coflfman as president of the 
University of Minnesota 1921 

223 



2 24 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

carrying the novice over the road already trod by his 
masters, and of saving him from some of the dangers that 
lurk in his way. Its highest aim is attained when, in 
addition to the modicum of knowledge and technical 
skill required for admission to the profession, the young 
practitioner goes forth with unselfish ideals of service and a 
mental equipment that impels him to develop his own 
professional strength. 

Knowledge, skill and ideals. — The aim of the pro- 
fessional school is to fit its graduates to give expert service 
in a society that feels its need of technical skill and is 
willing to pay for it. The world buys products of human 
labor, but what it really pays for is the technical skill of 
the worker. And back of technical skill lie specialized 
knowledge and the fine art of using it properly. Indeed, 
the only difiference between the artisan who repeats a 
thousand times an hour the same clever trick of manipu- 
lation, and the operative skill of the great surgeon, lies in 
the extent of knowledge focused on their tasks and the 
ideals that inspire the workers. Both workers may have 
skill of the highest order, but in the one, the center of 
control is the spinal cord; in the other, a higher center 
takes charge. Specialized knowledge, high ideals, tech- 
nical skill — these three are the trinity of professional 
guidance. 

Proportioning professional aims. — It follows, therefore, 
that a professional school should set up three dominant 
ends to aim at. In its curriculum it should strive to 
organize and systematize the knowledge available in its 
particular field so that its students may get the essential 
facts needed at the beginning of their career; in its teaching 



THE UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING 22$ 

it should give inspiration to creative effort and altruistic 
service; and at some stage of its training provision must be 
made for gaining technical skill. The pedagogical prob- 
lems of all professional schools grow out of these three 
fundamental requisites. These factors, however, are all 
variable quantities. A professional school may be accept- 
able in general and yet be weak in one or more of these 
essentials. The ideals that guide the faculty may be rightly 
conceived, and yet fail to function in the lives of students and 
graduates. The knowledge gained in course may be defect- 
ive because of lack of scholarship on the part of instructors, 
want of intelligence in students, or through bad teaching. 
Technical skill may be purchased at too great a cost, or 
neglected to the point of leaving graduates helpless on 
entering their vocational employment. Right propor- 
tion in the adjustment of these essentials is the crux of 
administration in every type of professional school. 

The curriculum of the professional school. — Consider 
first the problem of the curriculum. The professional 
student is not concerned with science in general, or phi- 
losophy in general, or anything else in general. His needs 
are very specific. He is given absurdly short time to get 
the information that scholars and masters of his subject 
have been collecting for centuries. His task is to select 
what is usable, to rearrange and classify it, to order it in 
such a way that principles shall emerge which may guide 
him to new knowledge or direct his practice. The whole 
process of education hitherto experienced is now reversed. 
Instead of getting a liberal education that aims to develop 
the man through culture and discipline of academic studies, 
the professional student finds himself in a situation that 

TREND IN ED. — 1 5 



226 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

demands he focus all his strength on making himself an 
intelligent, conscientious, efficient technical worker. There 
is no room for academic instruction in a professional 
curriculum once professional training really begins. The 
mental attitude of the student precludes the possibility 
of success, and the needs of the profession make it imprac- 
ticable. No professional curriculum gives half as much 
as is available in any professional field, nor half as much 
as the practitioner in any particular field can profitably 
use. Unless the liberal education acquired before pro- 
fessional training begins is dynamic and continues to 
function in making the man, there is small chance of further 
development under professional training. On the other 
hand, an education that does not result in making a man 
good for something is an anomaly in this work-a-day world. 
Vocational training is the complement of academic train- 
ing. It can never be a substitute for a liberal education, 
and it should never be confused either in aim, content, or 
method with academic training. 

Conflicts in organization. — A part of our trouble comes 
from the organization of our university system and arises 
from the fact that students are admitted to professional 
schools poorly prepared for professional training. The 
lack of academic training in some essential subjects ex- 
cuses the introduction into the professional curriculum 
of subjects that properly belong to the college. The 
consequence is that most of our professional curricula 
are partly academic. On the other hand, no American 
college that I know confines its students to instruction 
that has no bearing on their future vocation. More and 
more the American college caters in its later years to the 



THE UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING 227 

professional interest of its students. This overlapping 
of the college and the professional school is peculiarly 
American; it is the natural outcome of our individuahstic 
system of higher education. 

From the standpoint of the professional school, the 
interlacing of academic and vocational courses has two 
serious consequences. First, it tends to shorten the 
period set apart for professional training, and in the second 
place it intrudes into the professional school academic 
standards and methods of instruction wholly foreign to 
the professional spirit. 

Limits set by time. — The time that can be devoted to 
professional training is determined by hard economic 
facts. Theorizing on what the profession demands or 
what society should have by way of expert service plays a 
minor part. Society gets in the long run what it is willing 
to pay for. Professional workers, like other capitalists, 
are not inclined to increase their stock in trade beyond 
the point of satisfactory economic return. Fortunately, 
however, the professional worker is an idealist who counts 
as part of his reward the joy he finds in his work. But 
by and large, expert service is balanced by a cash equiv- 
alent, the size of which predetermines the expertness 
of the service as measured by the time expended in getting 
it. Lengthening a professional course is not necessarily 
synonymous with raising standards. Passing the limit 
of satisfactory economic return inevitably tends to de- 
crease the number of applicants or to lower the profes- 
sional ability of those content to plod through a longer 
course. The curriculum may be lengthened upwards, 
therefore, only if the graduates can increase their income 



228 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

enough to warrant the increase of capital represented in 
their training. So long as only a few can profit from a 
lengthened curriculum, the device of a graduate profes- 
sional course, as distinguished from research work, is the 
obvious way of meeting the situation. 

Crowding the curriculum. — The output of productive 
scholarship, increasing as it is every year in all professional 
fields, puts a heavy strain on professional teaching. Alert 
teachers find something new to add to their instruction 
every year. Some teachers in every faculty lack the 
ability to substitute the new for the old, and go on teach- 
ing this year what they taught last year. They invariably 
excuse themselves by an appeal to mental discipline, as 
though mental discipline could best be secured by present- 
ing half-truths or irrelevant facts. Others add to an 
overcrowded course more and more material until their 
students succumb to mental dyspepsia. But, with the 
best of foresight, the inevitable tendency is toward an 
overcrowded curriculum, and its accompanying discomforts 
for both teachers and students. 

Economy of time for the student and efficiency of 
teaching for the instructor are vital problems before every 
faculty. I suppose the only method of determining cor- 
rect procedure is by trial and error. The trouble with 
most college faculties is that they make the trial without 
profiting from their errors. They don't bury their mistakes, 
as physicians do, but they do graduate them. 

Paving the way to specialization. — The introductory 
courses in most of our professional schools are the chief 
obstacles to lengthening the curriculum by extending it 
4ownwards. If they are really pre-professional, are they 



THE UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING 229 

the best and most expeditious means of getting students 
ready for serious work in the several fields in which they 
specialize? The stock answer that these courses are well 
taught, that they are comprehensive, and that they afiford 
excellent mental discipline, is beside the mark. Grant 
all that. The same can be said for scores of other courses — 
some of which would be of incomparably greater worth 
to the farmer or the engineer or the physician who may be 
asked to represent his constituents on the County Board 
or in the Legislature, or who in his leisure hours wishes to 
read his daily paper intelligently and find pleasure in human 
affairs. 

The fact is, I assume, that these so-called introductory 
courses are included in the curriculum, first, because they 
are preparatory to the later work, and, second, because by 
university tradition (but more because of university 
poverty) they are regarded as fundamental. I am willing 
to grant that early in the course, preparation should be 
made for what is to follow; but every hour, from the time 
the student enters, is a preparation for all that comes 
after. Any line that may be drawn between general and 
special courses, or between pure and applied sciences, is 
purely artificial and arbitrary. The whims of academic 
teachers too often determine what introductory courses 
shall be given and how they shall be taught. Professional 
needs make way before the omniscience of academic 
specialists. 

Consulting the specialist. — The opinion of specialists 
on matters outside their own field, however, is of no more 
consequence than the opinion of other good people. Indeed, 
it may be not quite so good, if their personal interests are 



230 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

involved. Nevertheless, interdepartmental courtesy is 
so prevalent in every college faculty with which I have 
been connected, that it becomes dangerous to question the 
judgment of a strong man entrenched behind the entangle- 
ments of his own specialty. The fact is, however, that 
there is no one course universally recognized in American 
colleges as the best introductory course in any depart- 
ment. And even if the topics treated appeared on paper 
to be the same, the personahty of teachers and their selec- 
tion of illustrations would differentiate their instruction. 
The choice of topics for such courses has been conditioned 
by the interests of teachers and the needs of students. 
The needs of investigators in the several fields have un- 
doubtedly had first consideration, and next have come the 
needs of students in the older professional schools. A 
new school, such as the school of agriculture or journalism 
or business, has a hard row to hoe and receives tardy 
acknowledgment of its rights. 

A matter of false economy. — Probably the strongest 
prop for the idiosyncrasies of collegiate heads of depart- 
ments is the disposition of those who hold the purse- 
strings to take the cheapest way. It undoubtedly costs 
less to give the same introductory courses for aU students, 
at least during the formative period of university history; 
but there comes a time when the student enrollment in a 
particular school is large enough to justify special 
consideration. For example, it would not appreciably 
increase the cost of instruction in most of the science de- 
partments of a large university to give special introductory 
courses to students in the school of agriculture or engineer- 
ing or medicine. If that were done intelligently, the 



THE UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING 23 1 

selection of topics could be restricted to principles needed 
by the particular group of students, and all of the illustra- 
tions might have a direct bearing on the professional 
course. And the proper persons to decide what principles 
are needed and what illustrations are most serviceable, 
are those who have the professional understanding. The 
result would surely be a better preparation for professional 
work and a saving of students' time. Otherwise, I see 
no escape from an overcrowded curriculum, with the 
inevitable consequence of narrow specialization and bad 
teaching. 

Meeting professional needs. — It may be too much to 
expect that the American professional school should so 
early burst the swaddling bands of its academic nurse. 
Our oldest university professional schools had their begin- 
ning scarcely more than fifty years ago, and thirty years 
ago the best medical school and the best law school in the 
city of New York were really proprietary institutions. 
The foundations of agriculture and engineering were laid 
under the stress of our civil war, but the superstructure 
as we know it has been built in the last thirty years. 
These schools are all offshoots of the college, and the 
college supplied most of their early teachers. What 
wonder, then, that academic ideals of scholarship and aca- 
demic methods of teaching found their way into the pro- 
fessional schools. The framework and nomenclature of 
the college still remain. We have departments and sub- 
jects of study and semesters and credits — all according 
to the strict letter of the academic law. And yet we know 
that a department in the academic sense exists for the 
development — not to say illimitable expansion — of a 



232 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

subject, even to the bankruptcy of the institutional purse. 
A professional school has no need of departments except 
for administrative convenience. It has no excuse for 
courses of set length or for credits measured in semester 
hours. It needs only a faculty, because a faculty as 
distinguished from a department in our university system 
exists to protect and further the interests of a particular 
group of studenrs. Professional students demand that 
their instruction concern itself with the real work of hfe. 
Such a demand is perfectly legitimate, and no professional 
school can afford to ignore it. In fact, so far as I know, 
there is no other end worth working for in a professional 
school. We must rid ourselves of the notion that because 
an act or a process is simple or common, therefore it is un- 
worthy of a place in a university school. The material 
of instruction in a professional school cannot be measured 
by academic standards. The needs of the practitioner 
in his practice are the sole standards for determining what 
he should be taught. The binding of a wound or the 
tying of an artery is not a superlative test of intelligence, 
but no medical school thinks of graduating a physician 
without giving that ability. The professional school 
must teach what the student needs and has not already 
learned. 

Padding the curriculum. — A corollary to this proposi- 
tion is that what the professional student needs should be 
taught in the most efhcient way and in the shortest possible 
time. A professional school has no excuse for following 
academic tradition in giving courses all of the same length 
and mostly of the same credit. Graduates complain of 
padding in some courses given by academically minded 



THE UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING 233 

teachers. How can it be otherwise, if an instructor must 
spread over a semester, three hours a week, what might be 
better done in one third or one fourth that time? I know 
the disposition of college faculties to look askance at 
courses that can be given in less than semester units. 
Some are sure to say that they are not of university grade. 
My reply is that such critics are not of professional grade; 
they are either academic or research teachers. And no 
professional school should be controlled either by an aca- 
demic or a research faculty. The professional school 
that hesitates to teach what is needed by the practitioner 
in his practice, or to teach it adequately and in the short- 
est way is headed toward the tail end of the procession. 

Improvement in university teaching. — It takes more 
nerve than I have to discuss the practical problems of 
methods of teaching in a university. One may have 
his suspicions of the procedure behind the closed doors 
of a college classroom, but only the students subjected 
to the ordeal are really in a position to judge. But students 
are not competent to pass judgment on a teacher's work 
except in an empirical way, by comparison with the work 
of other teachers. The most serious obstacle to good 
workmanship in the teaching profession is the fact that 
the teacher rarely has a chance to measure himself with 
his equals. He deals only with his inferiors in point of 
intelligence, experience, and skill. What wonder, then, 
that some teachers fall into ruts, become intolerant of 
innovations, and resentful of criticism either from their 
students or colleagues? 

There is, however, one general principle of teaching 
that should commend itself to every instructor in a pro- 



234 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

fessional school. Granted that no professional student 
can possibly get in the time allowed for a professional 
course all that he needs in his future career, it follows that 
the materials of instruction should be those of most prac- 
tical service, and should be presented in such a way as to 
beget the cleanest understanding of their use. Useful 
knowledge comes from facts carefully coordinated — done 
up in packages and labeled " principles." There is no 
one best method of doing anytliing in general, but there 
may be a best method for a particular worker under very 
particular conditions, to do a particular thing. The 
teacher who is alive to his responsibility, conscious of his 
faults and ambitious to improve, will find a better way of 
doing his work with each succeeding class. The pity is 
that he should be willing to travel the path alone, giving 
pain to himself and doing injury to others, when so many 
of his predecessors and colleagues are competent to act 
as guides. 

Craftsmanship for the practitioner. — Intelligent work- 
manship is the final test of professional abihty. High 
ideals and abounding knowledge will not save the prac- 
titioner from merited condemnation, if he fails in tech- 
nical skill. Malpractice in medicine is not essentially 
different from incompetence in farm management. Such 
competence as is necessary to start the professional worker 
in the right way must come from practice under a master. 
Technical skill is estabhshed in hafcit. Bad habits are 
as easily acquired as good habits — and far harder to 
break. The steps in habit formation are three: (i) the 
learner should know what he is expected to do; (2) he should 
be shown how to do it; and (3) he must be kept doing the 



THE UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING 235 

right thing until it becomes automatic. The conscious 
effort of an inteUigent learner aids powerfully in determin- 
ing the proper procedure in a particular case, but only- 
persistent practice can ever give the skill demanded of 
the successful practitioner. 

Improvement of technical skill. — Some professional 
schools, like law, medicine, and engineering, have a well- 
defined body of special knowledge which can be imparted 
to relatively young students. The business of such a 
school is to uphold its professional ideals and give com- 
petent instruction in professional subjects, leaving the 
acquisition of technical skiU to come during a period of ap- 
prenticeship in an office, a hospital, or a shop, under the eye 
of a master. In the case of other professional schools, like 
those of teaching, journalism, and agriculture, the graduate 
must make good the first day on the job, at least have 
the ability to conceal his faults. Under such conditions, 
technical skill is at a premium. It is true, however, in 
every profession that technical skill is an asset which must 
be acquired, if not in course, then in the lower grades of 
professional service. How much should be given in the 
professional school is always determined by the condi- 
tions prevaihng in the profession. The profession that 
expects its novice to stand on his feet when he graduates 
must teach him to walk while in school. It does not 
follow, however, that a college graduate needs the same 
automatic precision in technical skill that the trade worker 
finds necessary. The lower the intelligence of the worker, 
the greater need of training in habit; the higher the in- 
telligence, the more can be left to self-direction. But 
every graduate of a professional school should have 



236 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

practice- enough in doing the real work of his future vocation 
to make him conscious of his faults and to give him con- 
fidence in his ability to direct himself in the application 
of his knowledge. It is not a question of the necessity 
of practical work; that must be conceded. The real 
question is, how and when can it best be given? Given 
in one way, the college is reduced to the rank of a trade 
school; given in another way, it places the institution on 
the professional plane. 

The basis for continued growth. — Professional training 
as I have said, is merely a device to shorten the period of 
apprenticeship undertaken by every learner who would 
acquire the knowledge and skill possessed by the leaders 
in his field. The professional school teaches only a part 
of the game; it succeeds best when it induces its students 
to become learners during the rest of their lives. When it 
provides the minimum required of its graduates on enter- 
ing their vocations, the rest of their instruction may safe- 
ly deal with the reasons underlying their professional 
practice. These reasons are embodied in the specialized 
knowledge that I have characterized as an essential factor 
in professional training. 

A golden mean. — - It is obvious that the reasons for a 
particular treatment can best be illustrated by reference 
to the act itself. It is the principle underlying all labora- 
tory work, except when laboratory work is made an end 
in itself. The student who sees what happens to a soggy 
field is better able to appreciate the reasons for under- 
drainage. A month in charge of a dairy herd will vitalize 
the teaching of the principles of feeding as nothing in 
books or lectures can do. The case system has revolu- 



THE UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING 237 

tionized the study of law, and the appeal from the lecture 
and the textbook in medicine to the laboratory, the bed- 
side, and the clinic has transformed the professional train- 
ing of the physician. Hence, I maintain that success in 
teaching the principles of professional practice is con- 
ditioned by actual experience in the practice of the pro- 
fession. Here, then, is where the professional school 
kills two birds with one stone. The ideal balance is 
obtained when enough practice is given to check up the 
theory, and enough theory to direct the practice aright. 
Disturb this balance by teaching theory as an end in 
itself, and you have an academic institution. Teach 
theory as reasons for practice, and you have the makings 
of a professional school. More cannot be expected until 
teaching itself becomes a profession and its novices are 
subjected to the same rigorous training that the best 
professions now expect of their candidates. Meantime, 
there is only one unpardonable sin that a professional 
faculty is likely to commit, and that is the failure to up- 
hold its own professional standards without fear or favor 
of academic tradition. 



INDEX 



Agriculture, 13, 68, 72. 

American characteristics, 26, 65, 

130. 
Americanization, 215, 217. 
Applied design, 93-95. 
Appreciation, training for, 181. 
Armstrong, Samuel Chapman, 25. 
Athletics, 84. 
Autocracy, 208. 

Baden-Powell, Sir Robert, 193. 

Baxter, Richard, 48. 

Belgium, 20. 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush, 140, 

141. 
Boston Latin School, 10. 
Bowditch, Henry P., 71. 
Boy scouts, 191, 192, 193, 196-199. 
Browning, Robert, 169. 

Capital, 97. 

Ceramics, 106. 

Church, training for the, 12, 54, 
207. 

Citizenship, 76, 113, 146, 185, 186, 
193, 215. 

Classical training, 15, 27. 

Classroom practice, 133. 

Code, educational, 44, 45. 

Coeducation, 157, 159, 163, 165, 
167, 168. 

College Entrance Examination 
Board, 58. 

College graduate as secondary- 
school teacher, 27-30. 

College training, 27, 31, 34, 38, 41, 

139- 

Community life, 164. 



Consciousness of kind, 217. 
Correlation, 109. 

Courses of study, 15, 18, 109, 122. 
Creed, educational, 23. 
Curriculum, 90, 97, 107, iii, 112, 

121, 161, 224, 225, 232. 
" Cuteness," 22, 62. 

Deadwood in education, 187. 
Democracy, 9, 21, 24, 25, 69, 113, 

129, 201, 202, 204, 205, 209, 211, 

213. 
Denmark, 68. 
Denominational control of schools, 

12. 
Dentistry, schools of, 13, 72. 
Discipline, mental, 118. 

Economics, study of, 96. 

Elementary schools, 11, 17, 26, 
95-96, 113, 206, 207, 215. 

Engineering, 13, 72. 

England, 9, 20, 21, 51-52, 53-55. 

Environment as educational fac- 
tor, 187. 

Ethical code for teachers, 218, 219, 
222. 

Ethics, 87, 115, 116, 126, 218. 

Examinations, 47, 48-49, 50-51, 
53-54. 57- 58-59. 210. 

False economy, 230. 

France, vocational training in, 19. 

Golden Rule, the, 204, 214. 

Habits, 175, 176, 194, 195, 212, 
213. 234. 



238 



INDEX 



239 



Harvard College, 10; University, 

71- 

Health instruction for parents, 172. 
Hippocratic oath, 74, 116. 
Holland, 20. 
Horace Mann Schools, 157. 

Ideals, 51-52, 56-57, 175, 224. 
Immigration, 12. 
Individualism, 185. 
Individuality, development of, 195. 
Industrialism, 12. 
Industrial arts, 103. 
Industrial education, 108, 112, 113. 
Industries, 102, 104, 106, 112. 

James, Edmund J., 64. 
James, WUliam, 176. 
Junior colleges, 223. 

Kipling, Rudyard, 52, 56, 191. 
Knowledge, 118, 133, 224. 

Labor, 22, 24, 97. 
Law, 13, 72, 235, 237. 
Leadership, 11, 14, 22, 39, 70, 79, 

134, 135, 180, 217. 
Lee, General, 182. 
Liberal education, 28, 80, 97. 

Majority rule, 203, 205. 
Man as social being, 32. 
Manual training, 24, 92, 93, 95, 

98-101. 
Mechanical arts, 13. 
Medicine, 13, 71. 
Money-spending profession, 179. 
Morals and manners, 174, 175. 
Moral standards, 116, 211. 
Mosely Commission 61, 62, 63. 
Motor element in education, 90. 

Natural resources, 63, 68. 
New England, 9-1 1, 49. 
Normal schools, 33, 39-42, 125. 



Opportunity (equality of) in edu- 
cation, 16, 21, 56, 113, 114, 161, 
166, 173. 

Organizations of teachers, 217, 218, 
219-221. 

Personality, 37. 

Pioneering, 64, 65. 

Practice, 123, 237. 

Practitioner, general, 142, 149, 

151. 234- 

Professional consciousness, 127. 
Professional schools, 13, 41-42, 72, 

224, 225, 226, 228, 231, 232. 
Professional service, 38, 77, 78, 79- 

81, 82, 83, 88, 116, 126, 138, 141. 
Professional standards, 41, 218. 
Professional training, 13, 29-35, 

37, 70, 72, 117, 123, 137, 138, 

139, 223, 224, 227, 236. 

Relative worths, 211. 
Religion, 17, 18. 

Sadler, Michael Ernest, 52, 55-56, 
Salaries, 28, 30, 222. 
Science, applied, 12, 68. 
School management, 135. 
School organizations, 136. 
Scouting education, 184. 
Secondary schools, 26, 27, 28, 30, 

31, 35. 37-39. 41. 44-45. 50-51. 
115, 127, 139, 159, 164, 206, 207, 

215- 

Self -direction, 130, 132, 136. 

Self-made men, 70. 

Social life, 85, 175. 

Socialization, 82, 99. 

Social needs, 100. 

Speciahst the, 142-143, 148, 150, 

152, 229. 

Specialization in education, 33, 95, 

140, 142, 143, 145, 147, 217, 228. 
Spencer, Herbert, 172. 
Standards in training, 137. 



240 



INDEX 



State control, 12, 208. 

State, training for the, 12, 54, 207. 

Subject matter, selection of, lOi. 

Support of education, 19. 

Sweden, 20. 

Switzerland, 20. 

Teachers' colleges, 30, 43, 153-156. 
Technic of teaching, 34. 
Technical skill, 123, 125, 224, 234, 

235- 
Textbooks, use of, 34, 91. 
Theory as reasons for practice, 237. 
Three R's, 17, 113. 



Tom Brown 's School Days, 54. 
Trades Unions, 41, 208, 218. 

University, the, 27, 43, 79, 81, 233. 

Vocational training, 13, 17, 18, 19, 
24, 90, 95, 96, 98, 100, 145, 161, 
162, 208, 227. 

Washington and Lee University, 

182. 
Whitman, Walt, 176. 
Worship, freedom of, 12. 



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